They are delicious.
Today I made a black bean dish to eat with them, and salsa roja to top. These I took to Dennery for the Peace Corps Thanksgiving dinner. Read about that above!
For now, let's focus on what will quite possibly be the best homemade flour tortillas you will ever eat.
This weekend I started making tortillas. I now consider myself an expert. I tried two different recipes, looked at about twenty, and came up with something that got all I wanted. Using just shortening gave the tortillas a very nice flexibility, but no flavor at all. Using just vegetable oil made the dough pretty unpliable. Some compromise, some addition, and I now have a flour tortilla that made a Colombian say "You're not from the States!"
Flour Tortillas
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup powedered skim milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp vegetable oil (I used soybean oil because it's the cheapest here)
1Tbsp shortening
1/2 cup warm water
Instructions
1. Mix dry ingredients together completely. (Powdered milk has a tendency to clump in general, so mix it well with the flour to prevent this)
2. Add vegetable oil, mix well. Things will start clumping a little.
3. Cut in the shortening, mixing in little by little. Mixture should now pack and crumble easily.
4. Add a water a little at a time. Mix in well until it all forms one big sticky blob. It shouldn't be wet, but nice and sticky. This way it will roll out well a few steps down the line.
5. Knead the dough for at least the length of one country song. Pull the dough apart into 10-12 clumps and roll into balls. Cover them with a damp paper towel, let sit for at least twenty minutes.
6. Sprinkle some flour on an even, clean surface (counter or tabletop work well) and put flour on a rolling pin. Take one dough ball, pat it down a little, and roll it out with the pin, so that it looks like a vertical oval. Flip it and turn it 90 degrees, and roll it so that it more closely resembles a circle. Use more flour on the pin, work surface, and tortilla as necessary. Roll it very thin, maybe 1/16th of an inch. It will thicken when heated, but making it thin in the first place makes it nice and bendable.
7. To cook the tortillas, heat a skillet over low-medium heat. Place a tortilla on the skillet, let it sit for about a minute, or until it puffs a little bit in several places. Flip it (there may be some brown spots on it now, this is normal and delicious) and let it sit for about 30 seconds or until the entire tortilla is a lighter color than it started out.
8. Eat! Eat! Eat! If you will serve them in a little bit, place them on two paper towels still attached, over a large sheet of aluminum foil. After you put each cooked tortilla on the stack, cover it with the rest of the paper towel, foil, and top with a towel or dishrag. If you want, you can freeze or microwave them. Serving suggestion:
Black Bean something or other
(serves a lot, so if it's just a meal for a couple people pare it down by half or so)
Ingredients
1 cup dried black beans
dash crushed oregano
dash crushed basil
dash salt
lotsa water
2 green bell peppers
2 red bell peppers
1 1/2 cup corn (I thawed my frozen corn, or you can drain and rinse a can of corn)
1 cup diced tomatoes (I used canned, since fresh tomatoes are really expensive here)
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp onion powder
(I forgot to add other spices, so add some cayenne or chipotle powder or something)
Directions
1. Prepare beans according to directions on package (soak, cook over low-med heat), but add salt, oregano, and basil when it's cooking. Drain, set aside.
2a. Preheat oven 400 degrees.
2. Dice bell peppers, removing seeds.
3. Toss corn and bell peppers with oil, onion powder, and other spices.
4a. Oh no! The oven isn't turning on! Now I have to
4. Scoop 1/4 bell pepper mixture onto skillet or frying pan with lid over medium heat. Cover, cook for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put cooked mixture into large casserole dish or bowl; repeat with the other 3/4 of the mixture.
5. Drain canned tomatoes or dice fresh tomatoes, remove seeds. Add tomatoes and beans to bell peppers and corn, toss well.
6. Scoop into delicious homemade tortillas, top with
Salsa Wouj
(This uses the local hot pepper, which I think are the same as habañeros, but I'm just going to call them hot peppers. I say salsa wouj instead of salsa roja because it's now a sort of creole sauce.) (I just found that they are called [elsewhere] Scotch Bonnets, and they are closely related to habañeros)
Ingredients
3/4 cup diced tomatoes
1 small hot pepper, diced, all but 2-3 seeds removed
1 clove garlic, diced
Dash black pepper
Dash cayenne
Dash onion powder
(again, if I had chili powder or cilantro, those would go in there. Also, I don't like onions, but if you do you can certainly use onion instead of onion powder.)
Directions
1. Make sure you use gloves (or a plastic back around the hand holding it, which is what I do) when cutting the hot pepper. Seriously. I am not kidding. I should know (my eye and hands have learned my lesson for me). Wash your hands and your knife and your cutting board thoroughly after cutting it.
2. Blend all ingredients together until there are no chunks
3. Wash hands again. Pour mixture into small serving dish. Wash hands again. Taste to see how spicy it is. Wash hands again.
4. Warn people that this is either spicy or very very spicy (if it's medium spicy, it takes a couple seconds before the heat hits; ) depending on the outcome.
5. Use to top black bean something or other that's in your delicious homemade tortilla; enjoy!
So there you go, a Melaney-style Thanksgiving dish.
It's late now, so I'll post pics of the steps and write about Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.
2 comments:
Melaney - I'm so glad you posted the recipes. Your tortillas, beans and salsa were wonderful! Thanks for bringing a dish that was light and different.
It wsa great to catch up with your blog! and it's all so vivid--the food, the place, and your adventures are practically jumping off the page! Thanks for all the effort and I promise to come more often.
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