4 recipes that use chihuahua cheese, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Queso fundido con chorizo, takes 25 minutes. It is most often cooked with butter, garlic and white onion.
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Mazatlán's seafood restaurants claim the 'governor's taco' was created in the 1980s for a visiting state governor, and it is now a fixture along the Sinaloa coast: shrimp sautéed with onion, poblano and tomato, folded into a griddled tortilla with plenty of melted cheese until crisp and gooey. Serve with avocado, lime and a hot sauce. Chef's tip: buy shrimp that smell of the sea, never of ammonia, and cook them the same day.
In the steak houses of Monterrey and Chihuahua, queso fundido arrives in a sizzling clay or iron dish before the grilled meat, and everyone scoops it into warm tortillas. This version is topped with fried Mexican chorizo, which is fresh pork sausage spiced with chile and vinegar. It's rich and stringy, best shared at the start of a meal. For a vegetarian version, swap the chorizo for sautéed mushrooms and roasted poblano strips, and use vegetarian cheeses. Chef's tip: warm the dish in the oven first so the cheese starts melting the moment it goes in.
In Ciudad Chihuahua and the farming towns of the Sierra, chile con queso is not the runny orange dip of Texas bars but a skillet of roasted long green chillies, onion and tomato with mild Chihuahua cheese melted through it, scooped up with flour tortillas at a carne-asada Sunday or eaten as a main with beans. Chihuahua cheese, also called queso menonita after the Mennonite farmers who make it, is like a mild, buttery cheddar. Chef's tip: steam the roasted chillies in a covered bowl; the skins then slide off in one go.
Loreto, on the Gulf of California side of Baja, is famous for its almejas chocolatas: large clams named for their glossy brown shells, sold by local divers and cooked at seafood stands along the bay. One popular way is to open them, top the meat with butter, garlic, chilli and melting cheese, and bake them until bubbling. Chocolate clams are rarely found elsewhere, so use the largest hard-shell clams you can buy, such as quahogs or cherrystones. Serve them hot as a starter with lime and cold drinks. Chef's tip: chop the clam meat before returning it to the shell, so every bite gets butter and cheese instead of one chewy mouthful.
Mexican
