Saturday, October 24, 2009

Olé!

I'm putting an end to my blogging hiatus with a recipe. One of the things that Kent and I have missed the most since moving to Pensacola is good Mexican food. There is NONE here! I think I took for granted the good Mexican food on every corner in Texas..and also the fresh tortillas. I LOVE nice thick, fresh tortillas. I even went as far as going down to a questionable part of Pensacola to the "Taco Rock" (where I was the only one speaking English) in search of good tortillas...even those were bad (I think they were store bought). After that I decided to just try to make some of my own. I found a recipe online that is fabulous and SO EASY. Here it is:





Texas Flour Tortillas (adapted from The Border Cookbook by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison)



Ingredients:

2 cups of all-purpose flour (can make them whole wheat by substituting one cup of whole-wheat flour for white flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
3/4 cups of warm milk



Method:

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and oil.Slowly add the warm milk.Stir until a loose, sticky ball is formed.Knead for two minutes on a floured surface. Dough should be firm and soft.Place dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap for 20 minutes.


After the dough has rested, break off eight sections, roll them into balls in your hands, place on a plate (make sure they aren’t touching) and then cover balls with damp cloth or plastic wrap for 10 minutes. (It’s very important to let the dough rest, otherwise it will be like elastic and won’t roll out to a proper thickness and shape.)


After dough has rested, one at a time place a dough ball on a floured surface, pat it out into a four-inch circle, and then roll with a rolling pin from the center until it’s thin and about eight inches in diameter. (If you roll out pie crusts you’ll have no problem with this.) Don’t over work the dough, or it’ll be stiff. Keep rolled-out tortillas covered until ready to cook.In a dry iron skillet or comal heated on high, cook the tortilla about thirty seconds on each side. It should start to puff a bit when it’s done.Keep cooked tortillas covered wrapped in a napkin until ready to eat.



Can be reheated in a dry iron skillet, over your gas-burner flame or in the oven wrapped in foil.While you probably won’t have any leftovers, you can store in the fridge tightly wrapped in foil or plastic for a day or so.

Makes eight tortillas.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Wow Martha, look at you making your own tortillas! Yum.