Oaxacan · Starter
Chapulines al Ajo y Limón
- Easy
- 15 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, richness that coats and comforts, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 300 g chapulines, small grade, cleaned
- 30 g garlic, sliced paper thin
- 30 g lard or neutral oil
- 6 g chile de árbol or chile piquín, ground
- 50 g lime juice
- 8 g fine salt
- warm tortillas, guacamole and quesillo, to serve
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Pick the chapulines over for stray legs and grit, and dry them in a low oven at 90C (195F) for 10 minutes if they feel at all soft. 10 min
- Set a comal or heavy pan over medium heat with the lard, add the garlic and cook until it is pale gold and stops bubbling hard.
- Tip in the chapulines and toast, shaking the pan constantly, 4-6 minutes: they turn from dull grey brown to brick red and begin to rattle against the metal like dry rice. 6 min
- Off the heat, dust with the ground chilli and salt, squeeze the lime over and toss twice, then eat them at once in a warm tortilla with guacamole and quesillo.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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