It all started the night before where I had some friends take me to a local grocery store with the list of ingredients to make the perfect baleadas and pastelitos. We grabbed ingredients like flour, shortening, and queso. Once we had everything we set it all aside to grab for our class at 9am.
The next morning I had a good friend of mine drive me down to the community of El Porvenir to see what these traditional dishes were all about. Honduras revolves around baleadas. It can be their breakfast, lunch, dinner or after bar snack. You really can’t leave Atlantida without trying it at least once, and I strongly doubt that your first time will be your last. I couldn’t wait to see how they are made. Ana, a woman that had been hosting and teaching these authentic cooking classes out of her home for many years welcomed us in. She understands English very well but doesn’t speak it too often. Usually her children are there to translate or she figures out a way around it. When we walked into the kitchen she handed me an apron and got to work!
We put together some dry ingredients and kneaded the tortilla dough and left them in balls to rise.
While that was rising she explained to us that she had cooked traditional beans from scratch. Next we rolled the tortillas out and this is where I stopped messing around. After a few tortillas, she may or may not have told me that I shape the best tortillas of all the foreigners she’d taught. Just to warn you, I’ve raised the bar quite high. Once these were all cooked on a “Comal” we set them aside and started on the pastelitos.
She showed us how to prepare the chicken, using all of the different spices in water and letting it cook, but pulled out a chicken that was already finished so we didn’t have to wait. She handed me the chicken and told me to start pulling everything apart. Once that was done, and I had sufficiently tasted enough chicken strips we went back to the dough. We rolled out the same balls we used for the tortillas and stuffed them with chicken. Next we fried them in oil until they were a delicious golden brown.
This is where the fun starts. We set the table with queso, sour cream, refried beans, tortillas, pico de gallo, pastelitos and it’s sauce.
Doesn’t this look good? We dove in. I have been in Honduras for about 5 weeks and I can assure you that I have fit in my fair share of baleadas while I’ve been here but this was hands down the best baleadas so far. Ana is a sweetheart, Honduran cooking is tons of fun and eating it was way too good. I would recommend this experience to anyone with a morning or an afternoon off that happens to also be a fan of the delicious cooking they have here in Honduras.
Contact Walquiriam at +50494896058 or info@resevacioneslaceiba.com with Reservaciones La Ceiba.