Tostada
Frying a tortilla flat and rigid turns a wrapper into a plate. Beans seal the porous shell before anything wet goes on, and the load, tinga, ceviche, pickled trotter, decides how long it lasts.
Los Antojitos de Masa
Tostada de Tinga
A flat plane with no walls: a corn tortilla fried until it shatters, smeared with beans, crowned with smoky chipotle chicken tinga, and eaten in a forward lean before the wet topping wins.
Tostada de Cueritos
Tostada with pickled pork skin (cueritos).
Tlayuda
A 30-to-40-centimetre dried corn round, brushed with asiento, layered with black beans and quesillo, folded over a meat, and set back across the wood-fired comal until the cheese ropes melt.
Tlayuda de Tasajo
The beef-led Oaxacan tlayuda: a white-corn tortilla past 40 cm, brushed with asiento, floored with black beans and quesillo, crowned with smoky charcoal-grilled tasajo, folded over the coals.
Tlayuda de Chorizo
Of the Oaxacan tlayudas the chorizo one is the greasiest in the way you want: the sausage renders and its red fat runs down into the black beans, seasoning the base before you reach the meat.
Tlayuda de Cecina
Oaxaca's meter-wide toasted tortilla layered with asiento, black beans, and stringy quesillo, topped with thin chile-rubbed cecina grilled hard over coals, then folded over the heat.
Sope
A thick round of corn masa with its rim pinched upward while still hot, the sope is an open vessel: beans, meat, cheese, crema, and salsa held in place by a wall the cook builds in seconds.
Sope de Tinga
A sope de tinga sets smoky chipotle-braised chicken inside a fried masa wall over a bed of beans, the rim built to hold a sauce that would otherwise flood the plate.
Sope de Chorizo
Thick masa pinched into a rim, crisped in lard, then loaded with rendered Mexican chorizo, beans, and crema. The chorizo behind it traces to corn-fed pigs Cortes moved into the Valle de Toluca around.
Picada
A Veracruz picada is a thick corn-masa round with a thumb-pinched rim that pens in a loose salsa, finished with queso fresco and onion, eaten hot at a Gulf-coast breakfast stand.
Pellizcada
The pellizcada: a thick griddled corn-masa round, its rim pinched up into a low wall, topped open-faced with lard, salsa, crumbled queso, and onion. The pinch, from pellizcar, holds the load.
Memela
Thick oval corn masa base; topped with beans, salsa, cheese. Similar to sope but different shape/region.
Huarache
The huarache is a long, flat oval of corn masa named for a sandal, dressed across its whole surface so the base is half the eating rather than a wrapper for the topping.
Huarache con Suadero
The huarache con suadero sets confited rose-colored beef on a sandal-shaped masa oval, a form Carmen Gómez Medina invented at a Mexico City canal stall in the early 1930s.
Huarache con Bistec
The huarache con bistec is the steak build of the sandal-shaped masa platform: thin beef seared fast and chopped small, pinned to a long bean-smeared oval of corn.
Gordita
A gordita is a plump corn-masa round split along the edge into a hot pocket and filled; the older closed cousin of the tortilla, named for its thickness and made across central and northern Mexico.
Gordita de Horno
Split a gordita de horno warm and you get woodsmoke and toasted sugar, a crust colored against fire. The oven-baked masa round of Zacatecas and the Bajío, sweet with piloncillo or packed with beans.
Gordita de Chicharrón
The gordita de chicharrón fills the split masa pocket with pork crackling stewed soft in salsa, so a wet, gelatinous, porky core meets a firm warm corn shell that must hold it without dissolving.
Chalupa
One name, two unrelated fried builds: a shallow-fried Puebla masa antojito dressed hot with salsa, and Taco Bell's rigid deep-fried flatbread shell, launched in 1999 off Gordita dough.