AKA Enjitomatadas, AKA Pomodoradas:
We were in Victorville yesterday to see the missus' orthopedic surgeon. Her broken ankle has healed very well, and he's *very* pleased with it, but to be on the safe side, because of her diabetes--even though it's well controlled now--he doesn't want her going back to work until November…
We stopped at a little Oaxacan restuarant near the place that had supplied her wheelchair. We weren't terribly hungry, but knew we needed to have something before going home. We split a plate of the especial, which they had on the chalkboard as pomodoradas, but which are called mostly entomatadas elsewhere.
The basis of the dish is as simple as it gets: corn tortillas, fried in oil until soft, then dipped in a tomato sauce, then folded in quarters onto the plate and covered with more sauce, queso fresco, sliced onions, and sour cream or crema.
The tomato sauce can either be done with dry roasted vegetables (to get a little charring), or just boiled a bit, or even just blanched to remove the tomato skins. But it usually contains Romas, several cloves of garlic, an onion, a couple or three serranos or jalapenos, and spices (cinnamon, cumin, allspice, peppercorns), made into a coarse sauce in a blender (or a molcajete, if you like to work hard). Then the sauce is fried in a little oil in a pan for a few minutes. It's just a fresh-tasting, slightly spicy sauce.
You can prepare these with a filling--of beans or cheese, or rice--or just plain. They're a common meal, served from breakfast or brunch onward. And they can be accompanied by an omelet, eggs over easy, chorizo, chicken or beef: whatever you like.
At this place, they served up five large folded tortillas with a big slice of grilled arrachera (skirt steak) and frijoles refritos (lovely beans, topped with more crumbled queso fresco). But the entomatadas were the star.
I'm not sure what it was: probably the absolute punch of flavor from the sauce--very fresh-tasting and not overpowering in spices, just… flavor-packed. It could have been the tortillas: fried until just a little tough and a little crunchy, with the corn flavor well-developed. But it was striking how a dish that's so very simple could taste so very good.
It wasn't that we were hungry: we'd stopped at Emma Jean's Holland Burger Cafe on the way down for breakfast, and had loaded up on chicken fried steak, potatoes, eggs, and biscuits and gravy (!). But this not only filled us both up, splitting one order; it was extremely satisfying.
And as seems to happen all too often--not that it's a bad thing--the staff and the owner clustered around when they found out that the gringa and gringo Really Liked their specialty and wanted to talk about it, and started suggesting other Oaxacan favorites. They don't seem to get a lot of customers other than the local Hispanic community; it's just a little hole in the wall, but clean and pretty. And yummy. We'll be back.
While we were in town, we stopped by the Hispanic supermarket, and as usual, I loaded up the cart with fresh fruits and veggies for next to nothing: Fuji apples, four pounds for a dollar, that sort of thing. The most expensive items were a fava beas. We'd finally gone through the last of an old batch from one of the Arab markets down by Brookhurst, and I wanted to stock up again. I'm not happy without a varied and plentiful stock of pulses in the house.
The Vallarta produce staff rarely speaks a word of English, but I asked the fellow refilling the bin of pintos (with a half-dozen fifty-pound sacks!) for "habas". After a brief look of surprise ("How does this white-haired gringo know what habas are?"), he led me over to where the favas were, on shelves under the veggie displays. Cool!
Then when checking out, the older gentleman checking out behind me noted that I had significant quantities of tomatillos, cilantro, onions, and verdolagas (along with everything else!), pointed to his huge pile of pork ribs, and explained that he had volunteered (or his wife had volunteered him) to make enough pork and chili verde sauce to supply a charity event for three days. We got talking in the parking lot, too, about things like verdolagas and the best way to fix them. It turned out his son-in-law is a chiropractor in our town; we know him, and he'sthebest of the three here.
Food is such a great universal language…
Allen
