green chili, flour tortillas






This pork roast from Trader Joe's is nice. You could buy one and slice it and use the slices separately.


Four times this amount of chiles was diced up. 


This is my best batch of tortillas yet. 

I used the method shown by Mexican ladies on YouTube. I used butter for fat as you do a pie crust except it has baking powder and it uses very hot water to melt the fat. 

None of the YouTube videos show the technique that a friend's mother showed. She and her daughter do not use a rolling pin. Instead, they pat the wet dough in their hands and smash it and flip it like a mini pizza. Then they use a rolling motion to place it on the hot pan. Theirs come out much thicker and heartier than these. And my friend is so proud of his mother's tortillas. "The best in town." 



No matter what you do it comes out great. I've never been disappointed and I've never made it the same way twice. 

However, this was the weakest I've ever made. I kept taste-testing to bring up the body but nothing worked. Bay leaves. Beer. Garlic. Everything I tried was lame. 

It lacked what Japanese call umami. 

So I used Japanese flavor ingredients to correct it. 1) one tablespoon sugar 2) one tablespoon fish sauce 3) one tablespoon toasted sesame seed oil, boom, fixed beyond imagining. Three tablespoons of Asian ingredients greatly improved the whole pot. And it's a very large pot. 

Why has it taken me so long to learn these things?

I'm slow on the uptake. That's why.

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