Recipe Corner: Sopaipillas in a New Mexico style

I'm in the mood to add a recipe to the blog. So here it is.

These are sopaipillas, small fried puffy breads. The recipe is more of an oral history than a real recipe. A friend of mine makes these. He was taught by his grandmother. His family has been in New Mexico for generations. Therefore, these are one of the traditional New Mexico styles of sopaipillas.

You can find other recipes for New Mexico style food, including other recipes for sopaipillas, all over the net. I like the Foods of New Mexico website. I also like a particular cookbook, the Border Cookbook by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison. It doesn't have recipes for everything, and sometimes they're a bit fancier than the home cooking I've experienced, but it's still full of interesting possibilities.

Anyway, on to the recipe, such as it is. I've quietly shared it with some people already, in case it looks familiar. And if my friend is reading this: Hi! And thank you!

Sopaipillas in the style of a northern New Mexico grandmother

Sopaipillas are bits of fried dough. They puff up as you fry them, rather like pooris (puffed bread from India). The frying techniques are pretty much the same. In some areas, sopaipillas are served with honey butter or cinnamon sugar, and thus are somewhat dessert-like. But my friend was raised with them being an appetizer or a bread-like accompaniment to the meal, not usually sweetened at all.

Most sopaipillas these days are made with baking powder as the leavening. But my friend's grandma uses yeast, and that's the method she taught to her grandchildren. The family has lived in northern New Mexico for many generations.

4 cups flour
~1/4-1/2 tsp salt (i.e. "a pinch")
2 tablespoons lard

Mix the above together. You can probably cut in the lard with a fork, a pastry cutter, your fingertips, or a food processor. My friend was somewhat vague on how to mix 2 T of fat into 4 c of flour.

Mix in one packet of yeast. A packet of yeast is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 teaspoons to a tablespoon. You could probably mix it with the flour and salt before cutting in the fat. I'd probably proof the yeast and add it as part of the water, but that's just me. (To proof yeast -- mix yeast with a pinch of sugar and some warm but not hot water, stirring to dissolve the yeast. Let it sit for about 10 minutes until it's bubbly.)

Add enough water to make a dough. Since you'll be kneading it later, it should be about like bread dough, not too sticky.

Let the dough rise. I don't think the exact time matters, but approximately until it doubles in volume.

Then, knead the dough for a few minutes. When questioned, my friend thought that 5 minutes was about right, give or take a bit.

You can let the dough rise again, but that step is optional.


Divide the dough into quarters. Roll out one quarter at a time. (I'm not sure of the proper thickness, but I think somewhere in the vicinity of 1/8" thick, about like you would for thin cookie-cutter cookies or for potsticker or poori dough.) Slice it into bits. The bits are roughly square, maybe 1.5" to 2" on each side. If some bits are triangular or rectangular or trapezoidal or a bit larger than 2", that's OK, too.

Each of these bits will be one sopaipilla. If you want, you can re-roll each blob, or you can leave them as is with their cut edges. Both versions are good, but will end up with slightly different textures after cooking.

Next up is the frying. You want enough oil to submerge the sopaipillas. It needs to be fairly hot, but not smoking. If it's too cool, the sopaipillas will be soggy. If it's too hot, the sopaipillas will burn and/or cook too quickly. The first few sopaipillas will be prototypes as you adjust the temperature -- a good reward for the cook!

When the oil is the right temperature, add a few sopaipillas. You kind of tap them gently with your spatula (or other similar cooking implement) and they start to puff up. Spoon oil over the top as they cook. Flip them as necessary and fish them out when they are a light golden brown.

Put them on paper towels to absorb excess oil. If you have a lot of sopaipillas, stick them in the oven to stay warm.

Then eat them up, yum!

Here's a description of the cooking technique from The Border Cookbook: "In a heavy, high-sided saucepan or skillet, heat the oil to 400F [although the Jamisons do not specify an amount of oil, the recipe calls for "oil for deep frying"]. Carefully transfer 2 to 3 wedges of dough to the oil. After sinking briefly, the sopaipillas should begin to balloon and rise back to the surface. Spoon some oil over the tops of the sopaipillas. When the top surfaces are fully puffed, a matter of seconds, turn the sopaipillas. Cook just until the sopaipillas are light golden, and drain."

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One of the things I like about living here is the New Mexico style food. For example, roasted chilis are an important local foodstuff. Small stands with roasters pop up all over the place in late summer and early fall. The slightly acrid smell of roasting chilis fills the air. We buy chilis and freeze them to use all year long, until the next harvest season.

I like Green Chili Stew, New Mexico style enchiladas, and all the other things that my friends have shared with me or that I've eaten in restaurants run by people who cook in the local style.

A Ghost Story

I came across a new-to-me ghost story involving the Palmer Divide.

It's from the Friends of the Monument Preserve Newsletter, Winter '07/'08 issue.

The Monument Preserve is a another name for the Monument Fire Center, an area in Pike National Forest that is east of Mount Herman. It's a popular area for hiking, biking, and wandering around. The Pike Hot Shots have a training center there. There's a memorial to fallen forest firefighters. There are rows and rows of trees from the old Monument Nursery.

Anyway, here's the story, given by Mary Carew, a local resident:

The Ghost Couple, by Mary Carew

A man and woman who both worked for the Forest Service were living in a cabin next to the Memorial Grove. In the fall, they turned on the heater, it malfunctioned and they died in their cabin. The story goes that they liked the Preserve so much, they haven’t left. If you see a couple with a German Shepard dog who vanish when you get near them, you have seen the ”Ghost Couple”. They have been seen several times particularly on the hill above the ruin of the cabin.