<< Marymere Falls

03/08/13 - Memelas of March

We made up a batch of memelas. These are basically little Mexican pizzas. We made ours from scratch, so we make our own corn chips from masa harina, water and salt and fry them in a hot pan. Then we made the tomato sauce and topped the chips with sauce and queso fresco. Unlike a pizza which is baked in the oven, we just used the broiler to melt the cheese.

Memelas are little Mexican pizzas

The Corn Chips

  • 2 cups masa harina
  • 1 1/3 cup water
  • 1/2 tsp salt
Just mix everything together until it forms a nice dough. You do have to work it a little, but you don't have to knead it as you would pizza dough.

Heat up a frying pan (or even better, a cast iron skillet). Wait until the pan is nice and hot before cooking the chips or they'll stick.

Cut the blob of dough into 16 roughly equal pieces. Press each piece of dough in a tortilla press using wax paper or parchment to keep it from sticking. Cook three or four chips at a time, until each side is golden brown. This takes us about 2 minutes per side, but keep an eye on them so they don't burn.

The Sauce

  • 1 lb tomatoes
  • 1 jalapeno pepper, 2 serrano peppers or 2 tbsp nacho sliced jalapenos
  • 1 small onion, or 1/2 a larger one, chopped
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/4 - 1/2 cup fresh coriander, chopped
Cut the tomatoes in half and cut out their cores. Put them skin side up on a pizza tray and put them close to a hot broiler until the skins char.

Toss the tomato skins and put the tomatoes, the jalapenos, the onion and salt in a food processor and puree everything.

Heat up a pan and add the olive oil. When it is very hot, add the puree slowly, a bit at a time so that the sauce is boiling furiously. Cook the sauce, stiring now and then, until it thickens, for maybe 3-5 minutes.

Turn off the heat and add the coriander and stir it in so it cooks.

Assembly

Lay out the chips on a pizza tray and put some of the sauce on each. Crumble the queso fresco and put some of the cheese on each. It's just like making pizza now.

Put the tray under a broiler (or in a hot oven) to melt the cheese.

Serve as they are, or you can add jalapenos or fresh chopped sweet onion or ....

  

Keywords: recipes, food