ROASTED SQUASH CAN SPICE UP A TOSTADA

Something special happens when you fry tortillas, one at a time, in a pot filled with oil. As Gabrielle Hamilton wrote in one of the most memorable similes of her 2011 memoir, “Blood, Bones & Butter,” the tortilla will “float and sizzle on the surface for a moment like a lily pad on a pond.”

When Hamilton was forming them into edible salad bowls as a teenager at a Pennsylvania restaurant, she writes, the flour tortilla “came up around the bowl like the long dress and underskirts of a Victorian woman who had fallen, fully clothed, into a lake, her skirts billowing up around her heavy sinking body.”

I rarely fry flour tortillas, but I think of Hamilton’s description every time I drop a corn tortilla into oil, which I do at least once a week. I adore tacos in soft corn tortillas, too, but when you turn them deep golden brown and crispy in the frying, they become even more compelling to eat. You can pile them high with your favorite toppings and pick them up for eating — sometimes causing some spillage, but what’s more fun than something a little messy?

Those toppings can be just about anything you like: I usually go for some combination of beans, avocado, cilantro and salsa on mine (and sometimes chicken or shrimp for my husband’s), adding leftover roasted vegetables or greens as I see fit. A recent cookbook, Esteban Castillo’s “Chicano Eats” (Harper Design, 2020), gave me another inspiration: Castillo tosses roasted squash with a combination of the spices that typically flavor Mexican chorizo. As someone who has explored multiple vegan twists on chorizo, I was hooked immediately.

Castillo suggests sandwiching the squash in buns for tortas or folding it into tacos. But even before I tasted the tangy, spicy squash, I knew I’d be frying up some tortillas for this and that I’d first smear on some refried beans (either out of a can or mashed from leftovers). To me, they’re a must for the bottom layer, not just for their flavor and protein but for their stickiness, which will help hold the tostadas and their other toppings in place as you take bite after bite.