The cashew is a remarkably versatile ingredient. It’s as scrumptious handled merely—uncooked or roasted, with or with out salt—as it’s soaked and processed and used to imitate cheese, butter, and cream, typically with astonishing success. My favourite factor about it’s the way it grows: every nut, encased in a tough, kidney-shaped shell, hangs from the tip of a bulbous, shiny-skinned fruit, which turns crimson or yellow when ripe and might be simply mistaken for an apple or a bell pepper.
In nations throughout Asia and Latin America, this fruit is used to make a spectacular juice, with a candy, tart taste that’s as recognizable but as confoundingly advanced as Coca-Cola. In El Salvador, the place the fruit is called marañón, the juice is ubiquitous. Within the U.S., it’s a must to hunt for it, so I’m delighted to report a brand new supply: a restaurant known as Pupusas Ridgewood, the place you may order a plastic cup of it to go. At a second when journey is fraught, if not out of the query, it feels particularly miraculous to partake of a particular touchstone of one other place, to shift perspective with a sip.
The griddled masa cake generally known as the pupusa can also be a touchstone of El Salvador, the place it’s thought-about the nationwide dish, and the place, in 2005, a yearly vacation was instituted in its honor. Adjoining to the taco and the arepa, the pupusa is tougher to search out within the U.S. than both of these, though it was right here that Pupusas Ridgewood’s proprietor, Guillermina Ramírez, who was born and raised in Mexico, turned infatuated with the dish. After she moved to New York, pupusas have been the primary meals she ordered from a restaurant. Her menu affords little else, past just a few different recent juices, together with a cucumber lemonade, and treats equivalent to candied squash topped with pumpkin seeds and a three-tiered parfait of jello.
Undeterred by the pandemic, Ramírez opened her tiny pupusería—which might have fulfilled principally to-go orders anyhow—in July. The opposite day, she presided over the money register whereas, behind her, a chef named Yolanda Rosales, who’s from El Salvador, tossed palmfuls of salt into an enormous steel bowl of masa, hand-mixing the dough till it was thick and sticky, then molding it into saucer-size disks. Every pupusa encases some mixture of mozzarella cheese, refried beans, stewed pork (known as chicharrón in El Salvador) or hen, and greens, together with loroco, an earthy-tasting flowering vine that grows in El Salvador. They’re seared on a flattop and include the normal accompaniments of a skinny, gentle tomato salsa and a tangle of curtido, a tart Salvadoran slaw of supple shredded cabbage, carrot, jalapeño, and dried oregano.
Pupusas, you could uncover, may be habit-forming. At Mirna’s, which opened in Flatbush in August of final yr, you may strive a barely totally different iteration, smaller and served two per order, additionally with salsa and curtido. Right here, the menu is extra expansive. A Salvadoran breakfast platter comes with scrambled eggs, fried plantain, refried beans, crumbly duro blando cheese, and thick crema. Mashed plantain is used instead of dough to type empanadas, full of beans or crema, their browned exteriors caramelized to the purpose the place they’re nearly candy sufficient for dessert—as are the splendidly wealthy fresh-corn tamales.
At Mirna’s, whose married proprietors, Mirna Elisabeth Marroquin and Lorenzo Garcia, hail from El Salvador and Mexico, respectively, you can find each jugo de marañón and atol de piña, a heat, drinkable porridge constituted of masa and pineapple simmered in water. You’ll additionally discover a quesadilla, a phrase that for many People conjures the Mexican dish comprising a tortilla folded round cheese and different fillings. In El Salvador, a quesadilla is a candy and savory rice-flour poundcake with cheese blended into the batter. It’s excellent with morning espresso, and a tantalizing reminder of the chances of locations close to and much. (Pupusas Ridgewood, pupusas $3. Mirna’s Pupuseria, pupusas begin at $2.25.) ♦
This text has been up to date to match the model that ran in print.
