Itacates de Tepoztlán

Itacates are from Morelos. Specifically from Tepoztlán, the pueblo magico at the foot of the Tepozteco, where the Wednesday and Sunday market builds itself around the women shaping these thick triangles of masa and laying them on the comal. You will not find a proper itacate in Mexico City and you will certainly not find one outside Morelos. This is a regional snack, anchored to one place, and that is the whole point.

The shape matters. An itacate is a triangle, fat through the middle, half an inch thick or more, built so it can be split open down one side and stuffed like a pocket. Anyone who hands you a flat round and calls it an itacate has handed you a thick tortilla. The triangle is not decorative. It is structural. The corners hold the heat in while the center cooks, and the geometry gives you three edges to slice into. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Morelos drew this one with a knife.

The classic filling in Tepoztlán is cecina enchilada from Yecapixtla, the other Morelos town that has built its reputation on a single product. Cecina is thin-sliced beef, salt-cured and chile-rubbed, sold by weight at storefronts that have done nothing else for generations. Queso fresco from the Morelos ranches, crema, salsa verde cruda made with chile serrano and tomatillo, raw white onion, cilantro. No flour tortillas. No yellow cheese. No sour cream. Those belong somewhere else.

My mother and I went to Tepoztlán together one Sunday in October, the year before she died. We climbed halfway up the Tepozteco and came back down hungry. The first thing she bought at the market was an itacate stuffed with cecina, wrapped in brown paper, eaten standing up. She wrote two lines in her notebook that evening: 'masa gorda, triangular, queso fresco de Morelos, cecina de Yecapixtla, salsa verde cruda. No me vengas con atajos.' That is the whole recipe. Everything else is execution. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.