Welcome to the inaugural post for my new site dedicated to Mexican cooking. And what else would I start with but the most important staple of the Mexican diet, the tortilla. Its Nahuatl name is tlaxcalli changed to tortilla by the Spanish in the 1500’s. While the point of this site is to learn Mexican cooking from scratch…well what can I say, unless you know a person who has a mill to grind corn in NYC or New Haven, I just didn’t have time for my metate to arrive and grind the corn by hand. Otherwise I would have soaked my dried corn in lime slate as directed by Diane Kennedy.

So I started with Maseca brand instant corn masa mix. You are supposed to mix in enough water so that it is as soft as possible without being sticky. Then I let it rest for 15 minutes. Peter and I cleared the dining table and rolled the dough into 15 little balls.

During my grandmothers childhood in Chavez Ravine (Dodger Stadium to the few who don’t know my family history), the trucks would come along to pick up residents to go to the Campo to pick oranges or whatever. They did this for extra money or to help out family members who were new to L.A. and working in the fields. Early in the morning the women and girls would get up and start preparing the tortillas. There was one gentleman in the campo that told my grandmother. “I always know when Rosie is here, because I can hear you making tortillas”. Apparently her clapping to flatten the tortillas had a distinctive rhythm to it. My grandmother is a very precise, hard working woman. I’m sure stories about her will color this site often.

Because I have yet to purchase a tortilla presser, we decided to pat them out by hand the old fashion way. Here is where I learned that I put too much water in the masa and the first few tortillas stuck to our hands. Peter brilliantly dusted his hands with flour and things went much better. I was hoping I would inherit my Grandmother’s natural rhythm, but by the time I was born, there was no more fresh tortilla making and I guess this skill didn’t come stamped on my genetic code.
I think I made my first anthropological observation while flattening tortillas. The reason fresh tortillas are so small is because they are made with little Mexican hands. I could only make them so big before they dipped off the sides of my hands and started to break. Peter’s tortillas came out the best of all because he had more surface area to work with.

They took a couple of minutes to cook in a skillet (Macy’s didn’t sell a comal). They could have used a little salt, but served with the Ropa Vieja (Daisy Cooks) that had a little too much salt, they were delicious.

If your thinking, “Puerto Rican/Cuban Ropa Vieja with tortillas, why?” Well, it’s ‘cuz that’s what we had planned to eat anyway. Chalk this up to the West Coast and East Coast colliding.

Recipe (Tausend, Marilyn. Cocina De La Familia)

Ingredients:
2 cups masa harina for tortillas
11/4 cups of warm water

Directions:

Pour in 11/4 cups of warm water all at once and mix together with your hands. Knead briefly. The dough should be soft as possible but not sticky. Cover with plastic wrap.
Let the masa rest about 15 minutes. Set the tortilla press and 2 pieces of heavy plastic, such as from freezer bags. Place one of the sheets of plastic on the bottom of the tortilla press.
Roll into about 15 equal-size balls. Cover with plastic.
Heat a large griddle, comal, or cast-iron skillet over medium heat.
Open the Tortilla press and put a ball a masa on one sheet of plastic. Cover with the other and gently press down the top plate of the press.
Slide the tortilla off your hand – don’t flip it – onto the hot griddle and cook for a mental count of 20. The underside should just be freckled. Do this to the other side until done.