Good morning, brunch tlayuda!
It all starts with excellent non-GMO masa harina; pair it with a pineapple mimosa 🍍
Happy Friday, happy cook!
I’ve never been a big fan of brunch, but I’d definitely show up for this: a brunch tlayuda.
What? Never heard of a brunch tlayuda? Well, it’s not surprising — it may not have existed before I dreamt it up for a restaurant client last year. (The restaurant closed before the brunch tlayuda saw the light of day.) I have a bunch of projects like this sitting around unfinished that are calling to me, but in the last couple of days I’ve been thinking brunch tlayuda sounds like a winner for this weekend. I need to test and refine my recipe one more time before committing it to paper (or ether) on the big site, but thought I’d give you a preview.
A tlayuda, in case you need some background, is a large corn-tortilla-like disk spread with refried beans (usually black beans) and crowned with various toppings; the base itself is also called a tlayuda.
Traditionally, that base is spread first with asiento, sediment that’s left in the pan when you make lard by rendering pork fat, but the asiento layer is not necessary. Since many of the tlayudas I make are vegetarian or vegan, I always skip the the pork, and use vegan refried beans.
Tlayuda’s home is Oaxaca, where it’s a popular street food. You can also find tlayudas elsewhere in Mexico, particularly Mexico City. (I haven’t been to CDMX for a few years; my sources tell me tlayudas are trending there now.) What’s special about them is their texture: The base is a bit thicker than a corn tortilla, crisp on the edges and bottom but a little chewy in the middle.
I fell in love with tlayudas a couple years ago when I visited a sweet little spot in Brooklyn, NY called For All Things Good for a story I was writing for Bon Appétit. There they offer what they call “tlayuditas” — smaller versions of tlayudas — topped with things like avocados and salsa macha, or mushrooms and Oaxaca cheese. They also have one called a “breakfast tlayudita,” with a sunny-side-up egg as its focal point. Maybe I’d had this in the back of my mind when I dreamt up the brunch tlayuda, but I’d forgotten it.
As part of redo of all the menus for the restaurant in question — brunch, lunch and dinner — I had the idea of adding an all-day tlayuda program; we’d call them “Mexican Pizzas.” And because the restaurant was not able to make its own masa by grinding nixtamal (that would be a big production requiring expensive equipment), they could use heirloom masa harina.
The brunch tlayuda idea popped into my head: Start with the requisite tlayuda shell, spread it with refried black beans, strew some strings of Oaxaca cheese on top, run it under the salamander to melt the cheese, and top with a couple of scrambled eggs, followed by pico de gallo.
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