Roosevelt Culinary Arts

Pupusas, Curtido, Salsa Roja, and Somali Mashmash

This week we tried our hands at dishes from the food traditions of several of the culinary artists. We have students from both Honduras and El Salvador, where pupusas are celebrated as a national dish. Mashmash is a dessert from Somalia that is sort of a cross between a pancake, a donut, and a custard. Both are dee-lish-us!

To make pupusas, we started by making a tortilla dough, and then filling it with goodies such as beans, cheese, and spinach. There is a lot of technique to getting the shape flat enough and thin enough, and then sealing up the fillings and flattening them again. Then the pupusas or toasted on the griddle.

We also learned to make the vinegar-y coleslaw condiment called curtido and salsa roja that are served alongside pupusas.

And don’t forget about dessert! Mashmash is a simple batter of flour, water, and simple syrup. It is then cooked in oil until the sides are crispy and the middle is gooey and tender, so you get the best of both textures!

Not only were the recipes super tasty, but it’s safe to say we had a lot of fun learning to make them! And once we had tried our hands at the recipes, we even opened our doors to the staff, making over 80 pupusas and 40 mashmash during the lunch rush. The students are truly becoming a team of young chefs!

Here are the pupusa and curtido recipes we followed. This video is heartwarming as well as belly-filling:

Here is the pupusa and curtido recipe in print

We roughly followed this recipe for the salsa roja, though we chopped all the veggies, simmered everything in a pot for about an hour, and then used an immersion blender to liquify the salsa:

And here is the mashmash recipe, for which we used nonstick skillets and much less oil, and with a 1/4 cup scoop of batter per fritter, they came out perfectly!