By Virginia M. Wright
From our November 2023 issue
On the menu, it’s simply “Avocado,” but the popular tostada is more complex than its name suggests. A fixture among tapas offerings at Portland’s Regards, which Bon Appétit counted as one of the country’s best new restaurants last year, the play on avocado toast draws on chef Neil Zabriskie’s California roots and Oaxacan culinary explorations: diced avocado and pearl onions dressed in a smoky, piquant puree of fried garlic, peanuts, and morita and ancho chiles. He tries to source locally whenever possible. Those chiles, for instance, come from Litchfield’s Gryffon Ridge Spice Merchants. But the foundation of good tostadas is good tortillas, made from scratch using dried corn, and Zabriskie wasn’t finding suitable dried corn from anywhere nearby.
Then, Zabriskie came upon the flint corn grown at the Somali Bantu Community Association’s Liberation Farm, in the town of Wales. Flint corn is too starchy and tough to enjoy on the cob, but it’s ideal for milling masaharina flour. Zabriskie simmers the Somali-grown corn as Oaxacan cooks do, in a solution of calcium hydroxide and ash, then grinds the softened kernels in a volcanic-stone mill, adding sesame seeds to the resulting masa dough. Finally, he rolls the dough into fist-size balls, presses them into thin discs, and cooks them over coals until they’re crisped and slightly charred. All that for a dish that, tableside, has an air of elegant simplicity. “It puts a smile on people’s faces,” Zabriskie says, “a reminder that avocado and corn are the perfect pairing.”
