Recipe: Sopes!

March 09, 2013

What are sopes? I had the same question for my friend, Maria, who said she was craving them one day while we were working at the St. Regis. Here’s how she explained this Mexican delicacy: fried masa flour cakes topped with refried beans, lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, feta cheese and a special homemade green chili sauce.When she told me how crispy and delicious the corn flour cakes were, I decided it would be more fun to taste them than talk about them so we picked up the ingredients on our way home and Maria taught me step-by step how to make them! I recreated the sopes for Matt when he got home from work. Matt and I love them so much we find ourselves chanting, “Sopes, Sopes, Sopes!” whenever we get the craving. Sometimes we get a little too excited about the foods we like…

Ingredients for Masa cakes:

1 Cup of masa haria flour ¾ cup of water ½ of an onion oil for frying

Mix masa flour and water together with your hands until you get a smooth consistency. You want the dough to be soft and just barely sticking to your fingers. If it seems too dry, add water.

2. Make small balls out of the dough and flatten with your hand to make round, flat cakes. They should be about ½ inch thick.

3. Heat a skillet on medium high. Place each cake onto the skillet and let sit for 1 minute on each side. You want them to be golden brown.

4. Take off the skillet and shape the cakes by pinching the sides. Be careful because they will be hot!

5. Set aside and repeat with remaining sopas. 6. Heat a pan with oil and fry the sopas until they are cooked though and look crispy. Add chopped onions to the oil while you are frying them.

7. Heat refried beans.

8. Take the sopa cake and layer with refried beans, cooked onions, lettuce, tomato, avacado and feta cheese. Top with your homemade chili sauce (recipe below) and enjoy!

Ingredients for the green chili sauce: 4 jalapeños or Serrano chilies 4 tomatillos 3-4 cloves of garlic ½ cup of water 2tbs of cilantro ¼ cup of chopped onions pinch of salt

Boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan.
Add the jalapenos or chilies, tomatillos, garlic and salt. Boil for 5-7 minutes or until jalapeños and tomatillos are soft.
Put all ingredients into a blender and blend.
Add cilantro and onions.

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