Hi, my name is Luis Jimenez, and I am the executive chef at La Loncheria in Brooklyn.
Tortas are a traditional dish from Mexico.
There are different kinds of tortas in Mexico, depending on the region.
But they're mostly famous in Mexico City.
They're made with bread, beans, protein, sometimes a little bit of cheese, and that is it.
There's a traditional bread we use called "telera."
Most of the tortas come from the baguette you find in boulangeries, but it's a wider
type of bread than the baguette form.
You can find torta stands all over Mexico City, but most of the time it's made with
that style of bread.
You can currently find tortas in New York City, but we're taking tortas to the next
level by using our skills and experience.
We have a lamb-belly torta, which is called "La Niña Popov."
Lamb is a really special meat.
It's tricky sometimes.
We took on the challenge of making it really nice by braising it over night and marinating
it for 48 hours prior to cooking.
We mix garbanzo beans, or chickpeas, with black beans, and that's what we smear on the
bottom of the bread.
Then we add the roasted lamb belly.
We cook the belly in a barbacoa style.
I'm a big fan of the barbacoa from the city of Hidalgo, which is east of Mexico City.
We add pickled tomatillos and Oaxaca cheese, or string cheese, on our torta.
Then we serve the sandwich au jus, which is the lamb stock, or the consommé.
People can actually dip the torta into the jus and make it really nice and juicy.
We also have the "Ben Ami," which is a play on the banh mi: a traditional Vietnamese sandwich
from Southeast Asia.
We take a nice piece of brisket, salt it for 48 hours, and then put a double-rub into the
brisket and braise it.
We get this really nice, pink color around the brisket and put the adobo sauce on top.
We take two slices of the brisket and then always the same order of ingredients: A smear
of mayo on the bread, and then black beans with avocado leaf on the bottom.
The black beans always have to be on the bottom.
And then we add the banh mi ingredients, which are red cabbage, lots of cilantro, and slices
of jalapeño.
What we really want is to show that tortas can be made in many different ways.
I have a background in French cooking and Japanese cooking, and I wanted to bring that
to La Loncheria.
I wanted to combine those experiences with the traditional way of making tortas, which
I grew up eating.
I wanted to combine both elements—the traditional way of making tortas and my experience—into
La Loncheria.