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ribs where most of the heat is contained. She then slices the chiles and stews them with onions and cream that’s seasoned with cumin, salt, pepper, bouillon powder and a little house seasoning until the vegetables turn soft, creating a gordita filling that will melt into the dough.
The gordita itself isn’t the crisp corn-based shell more commonly found in the United States, but rather a wheat flour version that’s popular in Mexico’s northern states, like Chihuahua, which runs along the New Mexico and west Texas border. Though they met in the U.S., Hernandez is from Namiquipa, Holguin from Jiménez, and both were raised on this style of gordita.
The dough couldn’t be simplerHolguin kneads together flour, water, salt, vegetable shortening and baking powder into a giant lump that’s portioned into small, golf ball-size rounds and left to rest in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, when an order comes in, each ball is flattened in a tortilla press to a thin puck and tossed on a hot plancha — a flat griddle — that once belonged to Hernandez’s grandmother.
Sandwiched between the plancha and an oldfashioned hand iron, the gordita gently toasts until it gets hot enough for the water in the dough to reach its boiling point. In that instant, the gordita suddenly puffs up to triple its original thickness, leaving it with a lightly crisp, deep golden surface and a warm, steamy interior.
Holguin makes a small cut through the edge of the gordita, adds a smear of beans to the newly formed At dining.azcentral.com: Dominic Armato joins Nadia Holguin in the kitchen of Tacos Chiwas as she makes rajas gorditas from scratch. pocket, stuffs it with the creamy rajas, and finishes the dish with a sprinkle of shredded queso asadero, a mild Mexican cheese that melts like mozzarella.
The rajas gordita isn’t much to look at, but it’s a big, warm bear hug of a dish — a steaming hot pocket of freshly cooked dough wrapped around a gooey, creamy filling that’s saturated with hearty beans, smoky chiles, sweet onions and just enough of the peppers’ heat to leave your lips tingling in between bites. For Hernandez and Holguin, it’s a taste of their childhood. But this is the epitome of comfort food, no matter one’s heritage.
As Holguin says, “It’s so simple, it’s so simple, it’s so simple. But it’s so good.”