Conch and the Littlest Tortilla

An old school pal of mine, and we’re going back to middle school/high school days here, recently came back from a two-year stint in Honduras with the Peace Corps. The first thing I wanted to know about her experience, of course, was how was the food?

Surprisingly nothing to write home about, chum Jeni explained, although she did find she had a few favorites.

This week, since it happens to coincide with her leap-day birthday, our traveling kitchen took us on a journey to Central America in search of some tasty Honduran food.

According to Jeni, one of her top picks was the Honduran fried chicken. Think, crispy and absolutely addictive, it was a mystery to her just what made it so darn good. Marinated in a curry blend, among other spices, and tossed in corn flour, the chicken is usually fried in shortening. Sounds good to me, although Jeni insists there must have been some other magical ingredient that made this fried chicken completely irresistible.

Another of Jeni’s favorites was the baleadas, one of the most popular foods in Honduras. Originating in the town of La Ceiba, a simple baleada is a thick flour tortilla spread with mashed red silk beans and topped with Latin soured cream and salty cheese and folded in half. Baleadas might also be filled with scrambled eggs, meat, avocado and plantains, although the ones that Jeni filled up on contained pickled jalapeños and onions.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jeni found nances, a regional fruit that looks like a yellow cranberry, to be “totally gross” and also did not much care for mondongo, or tripe. Used in soups that were themselves quite tasty, Jeni found the mondongo had a “vile texture” that she did not at all enjoy.

With these tips in mind, and after some investigating of my own, I planned a light and simple Honduran menu of conch ceviche and pork baleadas on homemade tortillas.


Popular in Latin and Central America, I was surprised to actually find conch at a local seafood market. After watching a video about how to de-shell and clean our little sea snail buddies, we found that most of the work had already been done for us. Although at first the conches hardly looked appetizing, once we had trimmed off the skin, they looked less like slimy aliens.

Diced and tossed with red pepper, bell pepper, onion, lots of fresh cilantro and lime juice, we refrigerated the conch for a few hours to allow the citric acid to break down the meat proteins.

Once the ceviche had properly marinated, I got to work on hand making the tortillas. Seeing as masa dough is so easy to make (just add water), I opted for corn tortillas instead of flour.

Although I’ve seen it done a dozen times, making tortillas by hand is not as easy as it looks. No matter what I did, I could not form a tortilla much bigger than my hand. After much frustration and hungry tummy rumblings, I decided to just stick with cooking the world’s smallest tortillas.

Once they were warmed all the way through, we filled our mini-tillas with black refried beans, ground seasoned pork, chipotle cheddar cheese and fresh avocado.

Since baleadas are such a flexible dish, open to many creative interpretations, I find they’re hard not to like. Each one you have can be different from the last. Unfortunately for Adam, however, he apparently has never liked the baleadas staple mashed beans.

The ceviche was light and refreshing with firm and crisp textures working as well together as the lime zip and red pepper kick. I liked heaping it on top of the thick, warm, if not pitifully small tortillas.

I can always tell when Adam likes a dish, if it’s gone before anyone else has had a chance to raise a fork, that’s a pretty good indication. Conversely, when he has a post-meal snack it’s usually a sign that he didn’t like something. Well Jeni, evident by the evening trip out for a candy bar, I guess Adam is with you on this one, not much to write home about.