Torta de Cecina

A sheet of cecina from Yecapixtla starts as a slice of beef leg, the cut sold as cañada or pulpa negra, sliced a few millimetres thick, salted on both faces and laid out on long plank tables to dry in the sun for about an hour. It is then folded, hung to cool and greased with fat for storage. When a torta cook drops one of those sheets on a hot comal, it hisses at once, the edges curl, and a smell of salted beef fat and scorched crust rolls off the steel before the sheet has finished its first turn. Seconds later it is done, and the cook folds it in half or chops it into short ribbons so it will sit inside a roll without a single stubborn strip dragging out on the first bite.

The roll is a telera or a bolillo, split and pressed cut-side down on the same griddle until the crumb takes a thin crisp face. Refried beans go on the bottom half as a seal and a cushion, because the cecina arrives dry and salty and the bean layer gives it something soft to rest on. Avocado or a smear of crema supplies the fat the lean meat lacks, and sliced onion and pickled jalapeño add snap and acid. Leave the meat on the plancha past its few seconds and it hardens into brittle, over-salted shards that shatter under the teeth; pull it early and it stays pliable and chewy, which is where the sandwich wants it.

The first bite lands salt, then smoke, then a long satisfying chew as the cured fibres give way slowly. The plain sheet, without the red paste of cecina enchilada, tastes of beef concentrated by sun and char, and the cool avocado and bean cushion settle the salt down to something rounded. Around Yecapixtla the meat is usually eaten with nopales, onion or leek and fresh cheese, and a torta can absorb all three: the nopales add a slick green tang, the cheese squeaks faintly against the teeth, and a few ribbons of longaniza sausage sometimes go in beside the beef. The roll warms in the hand and the salt lingers on the lips long after the last corner is gone.

Eating one at a counter in Morelos or Mexico City, the order often carries a second voice: longaniza hissing on the same comal, a slice of fresh cheese from the town of Achichipico, a spoonful of salsa from a clay bowl. Locals in Yecapixtla ask for cecina with cream and cheese, and the torta folds that plate into a roll for the walk, wrapped in paper that darkens at the corners where the beef fat soaks through.

Cecina is a preserved meat, which is why it turns up far from its home. The sheets keep in wooden or plastic tubs until sold, and the weekly volume sold in Morelos has been estimated at around 200 tonnes, so a torta cook anywhere in central Mexico can buy sheets by the kilo and cook them to order. That portability shapes the torta: a counter needs only a griddle, a stack of rolls, a pot of beans and an avocado, and the rest of the work was done in the sun at Yecapixtla. The salt, the smoke and the chew all arrive in the roll from that one ingredient.

Cecina, Yecapixtla and the torta counter

The town of Yecapixtla, in eastern Morelos, bills itself the world capital of cecina, and its municipal market, beside the former convent, is lined with stalls that sell the sheets by weight. Salt-curing beef in Yecapixtla is traced to the sixteenth century, on lands granted to Hernán Cortés. The torta that carries this meat has no recorded inventor and no first menu, and sources do not say when the first cook slipped a sheet of cecina into a telera.

What is on record is the trade in the meat, and the sandwich follows wherever the meat is sold. Stalls in Yecapixtla weigh out the folded sheets, and tianguis vendors in Mexico City offer the same cecina plain or enchilada, so a griddle and a bag of rolls are enough to turn a kilo into lunch for a crowd. Tortas of cecina take their salt and their chew from that supply, and each counter chooses its own beans, cheese and chile.

A documented seller sits in Narvarte, Mexico City. Ceci La Cecina opened in July 2012 on Anaxágoras beside the Mercado 24 de Agosto and brings its cecina and longaniza from Yecapixtla, so diners need not travel to Morelos for either. Its menu lists a torta of chilaquiles, cecina, longaniza and queso, and the table offers cambray onions, nopales, guacamole, frijoles de olla, two salsas and serrano chiles to add to it, which means each torta is finished by the eater at the table.