Tortillas - flour and corn
Created | Updated Nov 15, 2003
Mexico --- Tortillas!
Well, a lot of other things come to my mind when I think of Mexico... but Tortillas are something I can enjoy everywhere... I don't need sun, the ocean, the desert or a hamac or anything else... I can do them in the winter with the windchill factor cooling things down to -40 ° C. Or in the summer, or just anytime, they are certainly one of my favourites.
Now to begin with, there are two kinds of Tortillas, corn and flour tortillas. I like the flour tortillas better though they are certainly not as healthy as the corn tortillas.
The recipies are very simple. The dough can be prepared even by the usual idiot barely being able to bring water to boil (don't even talk about going any further and put pasta in it, anyway...).
The ingredients for a nice flour Tortilla:
well, flour (wheat)
salt
oil
water
in a bowl put in wheat, this is the main ingredient. It will give you quite a good idea of how many tortillas you will get in the end.
Add a little salt (you can always add more later...).
Then poor in oil, be generous. When I poor in the oil I usually go around my "flour mountain", so that it is surrounded by oil, though you can always add more oil later.
Now mix in some hot (as hot as your hands can stand) water, be careful with that, I do have the tendency to poor in too much.
Now take your hands (or a spoon at the beginning) and mix everything real well, then stard kneading the dough real well.
If all went well you should find a ball of dough in your bowl which is not too firm, yet not too soft (I guess - to give you an idea - a bit like Pizza dough) and does not stick to your hands.
If you got sticky dough - add more oil.
Your dough is too soft/watery - add more flour.
Your dough is too firm - add more water.
For the latter two, pay attention to keep the proportions of flour, oil and water right, i.e. when you add more water you might need to add a little more oil. A good way to add some oil is to put a bit of oil in your hands, rub 'em together and then continue kneading.
Once your dough is all nice, rip off little bits of it and roll them in your hands to make little balls. To make the common sized tortilla form balls with a diameter of about 3-4 cm. For the bigger (a whole pan filling) ones make 'em twice as big. Now put your balls (oh great!) in a bowl (you could use the same as before to save you some dishwashing), cover them and let them rest for at least 20 minutes. I like them best when they rested for about 1 h.
Now to the tricky part, which is actually quite easy once you get the hang of it and it is the most fun part as you can impress your friends with it... (if you cannot do it, use a a bottle or one of those special devices women use to hurt their husbands (in old trickfilms that is). Or even better go to Mexico buy one of those Tortilla Makers, come back and make your tortillas)
Take a little of your dough balls (yeah, no more bad puns) in your hands, sqeeze it to a disc (probably 1-1.5 cm thick), then work your way from the center to the edge pressing and squeezing it and tearing it (careful, you don't want any holes in it). Now you got a bigger and very thin disc. If you get holes in it, you're most likely not doing it right or haven't let the dough rest long enough.
Put it in a medium hot - hot frying pan (you don't need a lot of oil in your pan as the trotillas contain quite a bit). You can still correct your tortilla by pressing on the edges to make it even thinner and bigger. Now wait a bit, your tortilla should not stick to the pan. You can play with it, move it around (use your fingers).
Start your next tortilla. Turn the original tortilla (once one side is nicely brown). Finish the preparation for your second tortilla.
Once the other side of your tortilla is well done, too, put it out of the pan on a plate which is covered by a kitchen towel (a clean one if possible) then fold the rest of the kitchen towel over your tortilla. So your tortilla rests on the kitchen towel and is covered by it, this keeps it warm. Oh yeah, don't forget to put your already prepared tortilla in the pan and when it's ready put it on top of your first tortilla. (at the end you will have a few tortillas (the ones you haven't eaten during the process...) restin on top of each other with the first and last touching the towel.
If your tortilla gets bubbles, it is not thin enough!
You don't need to do all of your tortillas right away, you can leave the dough for at least a day (outside, in the sun if you want...)
Once all of your tortillas are done move the plate to the table and impress your friends...
These tortillas are good as burritos, enchiladas, tacos and the one and only quesadillas! Don't forget refritos, rice, guacemole, salsa and your different hot sauces.
Corn tortillas
They are healthier, low (or no?) fat but still good.
Instead of using wheat flour use .... corn flour.
And do not put oil in your dough.
Now you can't prepare these in your hands, so use a bottle or another of the methods mentioned earlier.
Good just plain, with some refritos and lettuce, guacemole or salsa. They go well with jam for breakfast, either (don't over salt them though).
Hmmmmmmm, very yummy, I do get hungry writing this...
Of course you can cheat and buy your tortillas, but once you tried your home-made tortillas, you're never gonna buy any tortillas ever again!
Some last thoughts... of food, of course.
Refritos: mashed beans (frijoles in Spanish)(pinto, or so, no french beans (freedom beans?) or green beans) with salt and oil re-heated (refritos) in a pan. Cook your own beans! (No canned beans)
Tacos: folded Tortillas (a half moon shape) with stuff in it.
hmmm, tacos con pescado (fish)...
Burritos: rolled Tortillas with stuff in it.
Guacemole: basically an avocado sauce, if you don't like your typical Mexican restaurant guacemole, go to Mexico, get a friend who is a cook, make him do some guacemole with avocados of his garden, come back and tell me you don't like guacemole. Good guacemole contains pieces, is not made with a blender and is probably spelled another way.
Salsa: a sauce. There's probably a kzillion ways of preparing salsa, as the name means basically sauce. But general rule: it's red and there are most likely tomatoes in it.
Enchiladas: a sort of meal popular in Mexican restaurants (especially abroad). You get tortillas, some sort of meat and other ingredients and then you can make your own tacos or burritos or just put everything on your plate and eat it if you don't like tortillas.
Chili: I guess we all now Chili con carne. But there's also chili sin carne (sin meaning without) and other variations of chili.
Quesadillas: Defintely one of my favourites. Take one of your tortillas, put some cheese on it(take real cheese, it'll just taste better), fold or roll it and put it back in the pan until the cheese is melted (turn it if it gets too dark on one side...). You can dip them in salsa or mayo or...
You can also put some other ingredients in your quesadillas, a bit of lettuce, a slice of tomato...
or make quesadillas con refritos or con frijoles (I let you figure that one out (con means with))
Well, now imagine yourself in a kitchen palapa or just outside, in the shade... !Viva Mexico!
An interesting fact about avocados: they grow on trees. They are the only fruit in rich in some sort of healthy fat... saturated? Anyway, cats eat avocados. I had never seen cats eat fruits before.
Think of the other great fruits, mangos, papayas, guanavana (or so... it's called custard fruit in India). Oh, and try dulce de guayave with apples and cheese. I'm not too sure about my spelling... Unfortunately, unless you're the mountains (where it's colder), apples are pretty expensive as they're pretty exotic.
One nice thing about Mexican food is that you can combine and try a lot and still say that you had Mexican food. But when you go to Mexico be prepared to eat a lot of beans, rice and tortillas. This is by no means to say that there's no great food. There is, a lot of it. It's just that people do not prepare a royal meal everyday.
That's all I got to say about Mexican food.
Thank you for your attention.
Well, a lot of other things come to my mind when I think of Mexico... but Tortillas are something I can enjoy everywhere... I don't need sun, the ocean, the desert or a hamac or anything else... I can do them in the winter with the windchill factor cooling things down to -40 ° C. Or in the summer, or just anytime, they are certainly one of my favourites.
Now to begin with, there are two kinds of Tortillas, corn and flour tortillas. I like the flour tortillas better though they are certainly not as healthy as the corn tortillas.
The recipies are very simple. The dough can be prepared even by the usual idiot barely being able to bring water to boil (don't even talk about going any further and put pasta in it, anyway...).
The ingredients for a nice flour Tortilla:
well, flour (wheat)
salt
oil
water
in a bowl put in wheat, this is the main ingredient. It will give you quite a good idea of how many tortillas you will get in the end.
Add a little salt (you can always add more later...).
Then poor in oil, be generous. When I poor in the oil I usually go around my "flour mountain", so that it is surrounded by oil, though you can always add more oil later.
Now mix in some hot (as hot as your hands can stand) water, be careful with that, I do have the tendency to poor in too much.
Now take your hands (or a spoon at the beginning) and mix everything real well, then stard kneading the dough real well.
If all went well you should find a ball of dough in your bowl which is not too firm, yet not too soft (I guess - to give you an idea - a bit like Pizza dough) and does not stick to your hands.
If you got sticky dough - add more oil.
Your dough is too soft/watery - add more flour.
Your dough is too firm - add more water.
For the latter two, pay attention to keep the proportions of flour, oil and water right, i.e. when you add more water you might need to add a little more oil. A good way to add some oil is to put a bit of oil in your hands, rub 'em together and then continue kneading.
Once your dough is all nice, rip off little bits of it and roll them in your hands to make little balls. To make the common sized tortilla form balls with a diameter of about 3-4 cm. For the bigger (a whole pan filling) ones make 'em twice as big. Now put your balls (oh great!) in a bowl (you could use the same as before to save you some dishwashing), cover them and let them rest for at least 20 minutes. I like them best when they rested for about 1 h.
Now to the tricky part, which is actually quite easy once you get the hang of it and it is the most fun part as you can impress your friends with it... (if you cannot do it, use a a bottle or one of those special devices women use to hurt their husbands (in old trickfilms that is). Or even better go to Mexico buy one of those Tortilla Makers, come back and make your tortillas)
Take a little of your dough balls (yeah, no more bad puns) in your hands, sqeeze it to a disc (probably 1-1.5 cm thick), then work your way from the center to the edge pressing and squeezing it and tearing it (careful, you don't want any holes in it). Now you got a bigger and very thin disc. If you get holes in it, you're most likely not doing it right or haven't let the dough rest long enough.
Put it in a medium hot - hot frying pan (you don't need a lot of oil in your pan as the trotillas contain quite a bit). You can still correct your tortilla by pressing on the edges to make it even thinner and bigger. Now wait a bit, your tortilla should not stick to the pan. You can play with it, move it around (use your fingers).
Start your next tortilla. Turn the original tortilla (once one side is nicely brown). Finish the preparation for your second tortilla.
Once the other side of your tortilla is well done, too, put it out of the pan on a plate which is covered by a kitchen towel (a clean one if possible) then fold the rest of the kitchen towel over your tortilla. So your tortilla rests on the kitchen towel and is covered by it, this keeps it warm. Oh yeah, don't forget to put your already prepared tortilla in the pan and when it's ready put it on top of your first tortilla. (at the end you will have a few tortillas (the ones you haven't eaten during the process...) restin on top of each other with the first and last touching the towel.
If your tortilla gets bubbles, it is not thin enough!
You don't need to do all of your tortillas right away, you can leave the dough for at least a day (outside, in the sun if you want...)
Once all of your tortillas are done move the plate to the table and impress your friends...
These tortillas are good as burritos, enchiladas, tacos and the one and only quesadillas! Don't forget refritos, rice, guacemole, salsa and your different hot sauces.
Corn tortillas
They are healthier, low (or no?) fat but still good.
Instead of using wheat flour use .... corn flour.
And do not put oil in your dough.
Now you can't prepare these in your hands, so use a bottle or another of the methods mentioned earlier.
Good just plain, with some refritos and lettuce, guacemole or salsa. They go well with jam for breakfast, either (don't over salt them though).
Hmmmmmmm, very yummy, I do get hungry writing this...
Of course you can cheat and buy your tortillas, but once you tried your home-made tortillas, you're never gonna buy any tortillas ever again!
Some last thoughts... of food, of course.
Refritos: mashed beans (frijoles in Spanish)(pinto, or so, no french beans (freedom beans?) or green beans) with salt and oil re-heated (refritos) in a pan. Cook your own beans! (No canned beans)
Tacos: folded Tortillas (a half moon shape) with stuff in it.
hmmm, tacos con pescado (fish)...
Burritos: rolled Tortillas with stuff in it.
Guacemole: basically an avocado sauce, if you don't like your typical Mexican restaurant guacemole, go to Mexico, get a friend who is a cook, make him do some guacemole with avocados of his garden, come back and tell me you don't like guacemole. Good guacemole contains pieces, is not made with a blender and is probably spelled another way.
Salsa: a sauce. There's probably a kzillion ways of preparing salsa, as the name means basically sauce. But general rule: it's red and there are most likely tomatoes in it.
Enchiladas: a sort of meal popular in Mexican restaurants (especially abroad). You get tortillas, some sort of meat and other ingredients and then you can make your own tacos or burritos or just put everything on your plate and eat it if you don't like tortillas.
Chili: I guess we all now Chili con carne. But there's also chili sin carne (sin meaning without) and other variations of chili.
Quesadillas: Defintely one of my favourites. Take one of your tortillas, put some cheese on it(take real cheese, it'll just taste better), fold or roll it and put it back in the pan until the cheese is melted (turn it if it gets too dark on one side...). You can dip them in salsa or mayo or...
You can also put some other ingredients in your quesadillas, a bit of lettuce, a slice of tomato...
or make quesadillas con refritos or con frijoles (I let you figure that one out (con means with))
Well, now imagine yourself in a kitchen palapa or just outside, in the shade... !Viva Mexico!
An interesting fact about avocados: they grow on trees. They are the only fruit in rich in some sort of healthy fat... saturated? Anyway, cats eat avocados. I had never seen cats eat fruits before.
Think of the other great fruits, mangos, papayas, guanavana (or so... it's called custard fruit in India). Oh, and try dulce de guayave with apples and cheese. I'm not too sure about my spelling... Unfortunately, unless you're the mountains (where it's colder), apples are pretty expensive as they're pretty exotic.
One nice thing about Mexican food is that you can combine and try a lot and still say that you had Mexican food. But when you go to Mexico be prepared to eat a lot of beans, rice and tortillas. This is by no means to say that there's no great food. There is, a lot of it. It's just that people do not prepare a royal meal everyday.
That's all I got to say about Mexican food.
Thank you for your attention.
