Pupusa Party | Recipe

Touching down in El Salvador and stuffing myself with pupusas is a dream I hope to fulfill someday, but in the meantime, my most memorable pupusa experience takes place in San Francisco, CA. I remember the spot like it was yesterday, but I wouldn't be able to get there if you dropped me on Mission Street right now. It's been a long time since I lived in SF and my food memories are my strongest memories of place and space there (as is usually the case with my memory, and probably yours). Anyhow, thee pupusas were being cooked up at a food stall that stood directly in the center of a very small indoor shopping center. Maybe 4 or 5 shops - shops selling soccer jerseys, Giants hats, electronics, bags of masa, and, surely, an extensive myriad of treasures unseen by and unbeknownst to me. Sometimes I like to wander and this time that habit fared well for me. I ordered up a cheese pupusa not knowing exactly what to expect and I received an incredibly tantalizing stuffed masa patty literally brimming at the edges with melted cheese, told to top it off with whatever I might like from their selection of pupusa partners. I went with curtido and crema. That was almost least ten years ago and I'm still thinking about it. Maybe I should start looking for flights to San Salvador...In the meantime, I recently hosted a workshop with Blue Bus Cultured Foods on fermentation basics and how to make their cortido, inspired by the Salvadorian pupusa-topper curtido and one of their five flagship krauts. Naturally, we built this workshop together as a way to marry the making of cortido with a memorable lunch experience for our guests, namely a veritable pupusa feast. Whether you think of them as a street food, a cheap and easy everyday food, or a country's national treasure, pupusas are a staple of the cuisine of El Salvador and the proper foundation for any good curtido. These days, pupusa makers in El Salvador and far beyond are filling their masterpieces with signature and delectable mixtures, but a pupusa is traditionally filled with beans, pork, cheese, or some combination of the three. I decided to land somewhere in between exercising full creative (and environmental) license and following suit with the abuelas who know best. So my filling is cheesy (I used Tillamook white extra sharp cheddar) but also boasts bits of this season's vegetable bounty in my neck of the woods.Make or get yourself some curtido (if you're in Portland or the Columbia Gorge, we highly recommend Blue Bus' cortido, a Good Food Awards winner, NBD) and get this pupusa party on the road. As per usual internet video availablity related to nuanced daily activities, Youtube has some great videos that'll help you figure out how to stuff that filling into the dough. Enjoy!