This step is not necessary, but it is the way that I roll. These corn tortillas are cheap as can be and readily available.
Chicken pot pie Pennsylvania Dutch style left over from yesterday. Ordinarily the chicken will be shredded so that it sops up more sauce like a mop. Some Gringo-ized recipes will call for cream of chicken soup for moisture and for flavor. All of that is fine.
The red chile sauce is my own. Made of reconstituted dry red chiles in boiled water, strained, with a few added flavor elements that suit myself, oregano, garlic, lard, salt and pepper and such. There is no tomato here, although that would not be a problem.
Nobody does beans this way and for the life of me I do not know why not.
They're made like polenta. Dried beans turned to powder, flavor powders added including bay leaf processed with the beans, cumin, garlic, onion, mustard, bacon fat, salt/pepper, double the amount of water. Microwaved in pulses and stirred between 30 second increments until the mixture comes to a full boil in 3 minutes. Stirring and pulses is essential or else the mass turns into a hardened chunk that does not smooth out.
They're made like polenta. Dried beans turned to powder, flavor powders added including bay leaf processed with the beans, cumin, garlic, onion, mustard, bacon fat, salt/pepper, double the amount of water. Microwaved in pulses and stirred between 30 second increments until the mixture comes to a full boil in 3 minutes. Stirring and pulses is essential or else the mass turns into a hardened chunk that does not smooth out.
Coriander seeds from cilantro plants grown on the terrace. They have nothing to do with this.
3 comments:
Maybe sometime you could give us a lesson in tortilla-making, as taught to you by your Latina nanny.
Gosh, Rob, this was easy as pie.
But no Latina nanny. That was a friend's mother and sister who came to my house and showed me how to make flour tortillas by hand. I cannot do that. I use a rolling pin.
These are corn tortillas. By way of tortilla press that are available around these parts. I've shown it a couple times, here for example.
Today was exceedingly easy. 1 cup masa harina, with water direct from the tap in increments until dough formed. I just kept splashing in water (about 1 cup, thereabout) It's almost 1:1, possibly less. The wetness or dryness of the dough does make a difference on how they smash and pull off the press.
This made 10 golf-ball size wads that were smashed into smaller than normal tortillas. As one fries, another is pressed. The whole pile went very quickly.
After frying they can be cut like a pie and shallow fried into chips. They make excellent chips.
That is shown too. Here in animated gif.
I've been criticized for this. It's been said, "if you're making your own tortilla chips, then you have way too much time on your hands." There's a point there. But I still like my chips. And I never have any extra around.
[A few days ago I mentioned I haven't bought a loaf of bread in a decade and my friend appeared stunned. Actually I did buy one, but I ended up throwing it out. Something seemed terribly wrong.]
Thank you sir, you are a prince among men.
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