The very name of this traditional Mexican street food engages the tongue before you take a single bite: tla-co-yo, the harsh first three letters a giveaway to its prehispanic origins. (Nahuatl, the mother tongue of the Aztecs, employs the "tl" sound more often than my English-trained tongue can handle.) Oval-shaped and made from blue corn, tlacoyos are a food commonly found in Mexico's south, from Mexico City on down. I'm lucky to have a señora who every day (without fail, unless she sends her daughter) sits on a box outside the market and cooks up tlacoyos for the lunch crowd.
She has two long black-and-gray braids that she ties in a knot at their ends. Her skin is the color of dark rust and wrinkled; there is no telling how old she is. She smiles constantly. On her right is a plastic bucket of blue corn masa, or dough, and next to it two smaller buckets of pinto and fava bean fillings. On her left is a dish of grated cheese and another bucket filled with cooked cactus, cut in strips, and onions. A griddle upon a grill of hot coals balances before her.
This is how she works: She scoops a ball of blue corn dough up the sides of the bucket, rolling it as she does. Then she flattens the ball a bit in her hand, adds a smaller ball of bean filling on top of it, folds the blue dough around the filling like an envelope and pat, pat, pat! She shapes the tlacoyo into an oval the length of a hand, wrist to fingertip, and slaps into onto the griddle.
When the blue corn dough crisps, the tlacoyo is ready. Hot off the griddle, she makes an incision with her fingers along the tlacoyo's center, prying open the "envelope" so that she might drizzle in green salsa, ladle on cactus and sprinkle the grated cheese over it all. The result is colorful—blue, green, yellow and white—nutritious and vegetarian delight.
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