Tostadas de Pata Estilo CDMX

This is a Ciudad de México dish. Not a fancy one. A market dish, sold from glass cases at La Merced, at Mercado de Jamaica, at Mercado de San Juan, at the tostaderas along the streets of the Centro Histórico, where the women have been making them the same way since long before I was born. You eat tostadas de pata standing up, leaning over the counter, with a paper napkin tucked into your fist.

The pata is the dish. Pig's trotter, simmered for three hours until the skin turns translucent and the tendons go soft, then picked from the bone and dressed in a vinagreta sharp enough to wake up the dead. The vinegar cuts the fat. The serrano cuts the vinegar. The tomato and cilantro and oregano hold it all together. People who have not eaten this preparation think pata sounds strange. People who have eaten it understand that the texture, that yielding, gelatinous chew, is the whole point. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.

My mother did not make tostadas de pata. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco does not really do this. I learned it from Doña Concha, who ran a tostada stand on Calle Talavera near La Merced for forty-one years and who let me sit on a stool behind her counter for three weeks one summer while she taught me her vinagreta. She wrote nothing down. I wrote everything down. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and what Doña Concha knew about pata would have died with her if I had not asked. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.