Pupusas

     Last year, I discovered that delight of Salvadoran cuisine, pupusas.  These delightfully crispy, cheesy and savory creations tickled my taste buds (if you'll pardon the cliche) and I knew that I had to try to make them.  They couldn't be that hard, I thought.  However, between one thing and another, I delayed.  Not any longer!  Last night, I gathered up the guts (and the ingredients) and made fresh, homemade pupusas.

     I used a combination of recipes: one from a website I found on thekitchn.com, one from my cookbook (which I bought specifically for the pupusa recipe), lonely planet's The World's Best Street Food, where to find it & how to make it and a number of YouTube videos. 

     Note: Pupusas are traditionally served with a side of curtido, a lightly fermented vegetable mixture (kind of like sauerkraut).  I already had some at home as I had brought home pupusas for Scott this week.  Check out the kitchn website if you'd like to make your own.  They also have good pictures of the dough and an alternative way to fill your pupusa.

My homemade (imperfect, but still delicious) pupusas

Frying up the pupusas.  You can see the points where the cheese melted and crisped up.  Yum!

Pupusas (a combination of recipes from The World's Best Street Food and http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-salvadoran-pupusas-con-curtidorecipes-from-the-kitchn-176284 and my own).

Ingredients:
2 cups masa harina
1 1/4 cup warm water
grated cheese (I used quesadilla)
green chile peppers, grated
curtido, if desired

Procedure:

1) Mix masa and warm water together until you get a dough that is the consistency of play dough.  Let the dough rest for ten minutes.
2) Shred the cheese and chop the green chiles.
3) Heat up a cast iron skillet over high heat.
4) Grab a handful of the dough (about the size of a golf ball or so) and flatten it out in between your two hands.  Make a little level in the dough and put some cheese and chiles in there.  Cup your hand and seal the end.  Flatten the pupusa again, this time with the filling inside.  Don't worry if you have some cracks.
5) Put the raw pupusas on the cast iron.  You can heat them in oil if you'd like or just on the skillet itself.  Leave on the skillet for five minutes or so, then flip.  Make sure both sides are crispy brown.
6) Serve with curtido and enjoy.

     The results?  Delicious, but I definitely still need to work on my technique!  There was not quite enough filling and I think my masa dough was a little too dry; the pupusas would crack and filling would spill out.  Fortunately, I read on one of the many recipes (alas, I forget which one) to not worry too much if this happened as any spilled cheese would just crisp up.  I decided to go for quesadilla cheese (labeled, literally, quesadilla).  This turned out to be the perfect choice as any spilled cheese just crisped up and became quite delicious.  In fact, it was so delicious that I tried cooking some on its own on the cast iron to try to make a cheese crisp.  Definitely recommended!  I forgot about the accompanying curtido until the very last batch, but found it was a welcome addition.  I think next time I am going to try to make my own curtido (future blog?); I can make sauerkraut, so why not?  I definitely still need to work on my technique and dough recipe a bit.  However, with such delicious results, how can I go wrong?