Tostadas de Pata Veracruzanas

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy 8-quart stockpot or pressure cooker (olla express)
• •Tongs or a kitchen spider
• •Large glass or ceramic bowl for the escabeche (non-reactive)
• •Cast iron comal or a small fryer for crisping the tostadas

Instructions

1. 1

   Clean and blanch the pata

   Rinse the pata sections under cold running water and scrub anywhere that needs it. Singe off any stray hair over a flame. Drop the pieces into a pot of boiling water and blanch for ten minutes, then drain and rinse again. The gray scum that rises is exactly what would cloud your escabeche later. Throw it out. You start this dish clean or you don't start it right.

2. 2

   Simmer until it gives

   Return the pata to a heavy stockpot and cover with cold water by two inches. Add the halved onion, garlic, bay leaves, the thyme and marjoram, the peppercorns, and the salt. Bring to a gentle simmer, never a hard boil, and cook partially covered for about three hours. You are waiting for the skin and tendon to turn soft and translucent and pull from the bone with no resistance. A pressure cooker does this in fifty minutes and I won't argue with you about it. The collagen needs heat and time, that's all.

   Press a piece between two fingers. If it feels sticky, that's the gelatin. That stickiness is the whole point. It's what makes the cold escabeche set into something you can pile on a tostada.
3. 3

   Pick and chop

   Lift the pata out and let it cool until you can handle it. Pull every bit of skin, meat, and soft cartilage off the bones. Discard the bones, the hard loose pieces, and the spent aromatics. Chop everything else into bite-size pieces. Don't rinse away the gelatin clinging to the meat. That is flavor and that is texture, and you worked three hours for it.

4. 4

   Build the escabeche

   While the pata is still warm, put it in a large glass or ceramic bowl. Never metal. Vinegar and metal give you a taste like a coin in your mouth. Add the vinegar, olive oil, sliced onion, the jalapeños and their brine, the olives, capers, and oregano. Season with salt and toss well. Warm meat drinks the vinegar the way cold meat never will. This is the moment the dish becomes Veracruzano. The olive and the caper came through that port. Now they belong to the pata.

   Taste the dressing before it goes cold and commit to the balance now: enough vinegar to wake it, enough oil to round it, enough oregano that you smell it before you taste it.
5. 5

   Chill overnight

   Cover and refrigerate at least four hours, better overnight. Two things happen in the cold. The gelatin sets and binds the whole bowl together, and the vinegar and oregano work their way into every piece. This is a make-ahead dish on purpose. It is better the second day than the first. No me vengas con atajos here. The pata has to rest, and so do you. Así se hace y punto.

6. 6

   Taste cold and adjust

   Taste it cold before you serve. Cold mutes salt and acid both, so what tasted bright last night can taste flat this morning. Add a pinch of salt or a splash more vinegar until it wakes back up. Let the bowl sit out for fifteen minutes to lose the deepest chill. You want it cool, not ice-cold.

7. 7

   Build the tostadas to order

   Build the tostadas one at a time and only when you're ready to eat. Smear each crisp tostada with warm refried black beans. Pile on a generous spoonful of the cold pata escabeche, letting the onion and olives fall where they may. Tuck shredded lettuce and sliced avocado around and under, crumble queso fresco over the top, and drizzle with crema. Finish with crushed chiltepín for whoever wants the heat. Eat it standing up if you want to do it right.

   Dress the tostada at the last second. A tostada under wet toppings goes soft in minutes, and a soggy tostada is a broken promise. The beans go first for a reason: they seal the tortilla and buy you a little time.

Chef Tips

• •Ask the carnicero to clean, split, and cut the pata crosswise into sections. Smell it before you buy it. Good pata smells like clean meat and nothing else. If it smells sour or off, walk away, no escabeche will save it.
• •Use a glass, ceramic, or talavera bowl for the escabeche, never aluminum or raw steel. Vinegar pulls a metallic taste out of reactive metal and it will follow the dish all the way to the tostada.
• •If you can't find pata de res, manita de cerdo (pig's foot) is the closest cousin and it's the one my mother kept in a jar. It's a compromise, not an upgrade. The texture is softer and the flavor leans pork, but the escabeche treats it the same way.
• •Frijoles negros, not pinto. This is Veracruz. The pinto bean belongs to the north and it has its own dishes. On this tostada the black bean is the right base and the right color underneath the pale pickled meat.

Advance Preparation

• •Simmer and pick the pata up to one day ahead, dress it warm in the escabeche, and chill overnight. It is genuinely better the second day, once the gelatin has set and the vinegar has found every piece.
• •The pata escabeche keeps four to five days refrigerated in a sealed glass jar or bowl. Assemble the tostadas only at serving time so the tortilla stays crisp.
• •Fry your own tostadas from day-old hand-pressed corn tortillas and store them in a cloth-lined basket. Never dress them until the plate is going to the table.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 450g)