Tortillas!

When I was small, school field trips were not the rarity they are today. My favorite trip was always to San Diego's Museum of Man. The exhibit I most looked forward to wasn't inside the museum but sitting under an umbrella on the front steps. The tortilla lady! Twenty five cents would get me two tortillas with butter and salsa plus a tortilla making demonstration, which mesmerized me. I can still remember her technique. 

Those field trips were, perhaps, the first indication that I would grow up to be a foodie and not an anthropologist after all.

Homemade corn tortillas

-makes 8-10 tortillas

Equipment: large mixing bowl, pan for cooking tortillas (not a non-stick! cast iron would be perfect), measuring cups, small bowl for hands, damp clean dishcloth, two quart size ziplock type bags, rolling pin, spatula

Ingredients:

• 3 cups masa harina (I buy it; can be made if you have a flat stone or a grain mill handy)
• warm water
• that is all.

Directions:

• Pour masa into large bowl, add warm water, a small amount at a time, mixing together with your hands until you have a slightly wet dough that doesn't easily stick to your fingers (actually quite wet in comparison with other doughs). Cover with a damp dishcloth and allow to sit for 10 minutes or so, this helps soften the masa so the tortillas aren't too grainy.
• Keep a small bowl of water at your work area for dipping your hands. Wet hands and roll the amount of dough that fits into the palm of your hand between two cupped hands until you have a perfect ball. Do all the dough this way and keep balls covered with damp dishtowel while rolling others out.
• Preheat dry (no oil or butter) pan on medium/high on stovetop.
• With wet hands, squeeze ball slightly between them, turn and squeeze again to flatten slightly.
• Place flattened ball on top of one ziplock bag, place the other on top, and roll out with a similar technique as a pie crust and to a similar thickness.
• Cook in pan a couple at a time, flipping then flattening with spatula, a minute or two on each side. Tortillas are done when you notice the color become more white than yellow and can see air pockets begin to form. To be sure, you better just taste one!
• Set aside and wrap in a towel until serving. Can be refrigerated and reheated, will keep about a week, but they'll never last that long.

-I spelled out the technique in a pretty detailed way here purposely. I've made many a lumpy tortilla in my life before getting them just right. While the tortilla lady never used ziplock bags, this is the only way I've found that works without the tortillas sticking.





As an aside, I just googled the tortilla lady. If you're ever in San Diego, she's still there at the Museum of Man but she's been promoted to an indoor space (maybe to attract visitors like me to pay the entrance fee?) and now charges 50 cents per.


XO, Debbie