Food
Tortillas! The bread of Tex-Mex life
By ELLISE PIERCE / Cowgirl Chef
A Mexican restaurant's gotta have four things to win this cowgirl over: spicy made-that-day salsa; crispy, not-too-thick chips; margaritas with freshly squeezed limes (you'd be surprised at how many places use those sugary mixes); and, oh yeah, homemade tortillas.
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Photos by Xavier Lhospice
Thank goodness, in the West and Southwest and on the West Coast, sassy salsa is fairly easy to find, and great chips, too. The perfect margarita — a bit harder. And tortillas? Even in my hometown of Dallas, where Mexican restaurants outnumber any other ethnic restaurant by a landslide, places that still make their own tortillas are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Which is understandable, I suppose, given that there are lots of tortillerias in Dallas that crank out thousands of tortillas each day, but forgivable? Absolutely not, given the importance that tortillas play in Mexican culture and cuisine. Plus, they're easy to make — and so much better than the store-bought ones.
Mexico's answer to sliced bread is so ancient it dates back to 10,000 B.C., when tortillas were invented, according to Maya legend, for a hungry king. The Aztecs called them tlaxcalli in their native language of Nahuatl, which was apparently hard for Hernándo Cortés and his conquistadors to pronounce when they landed in Mesoamerica in 1519 looking for gold. They found plenty of gold, which they sent back to Spain, and also discovered the ubiquitous round discs made from the Aztecs' sacred corn plant. Cortés thought they resembled the round cakes called tortas back home.
The new name stuck, but the basics remained the same: Shuck corn, then nixtamalize — a Nahuatl-based word for an alkalinizing process still in use today in which corn kernels are boiled in water with mineral lime, allowing the skins to fall off easily and changing the corn's chemistry. Processed this way, corn is a complete protein when eaten with beans, another mainstay of the pre-Columbian Mexican diet.
Ages ago, women used a flat, slightly curved metate, a slab made of black basalt, along with a rolling-pin device made of stone called a mano, to grind the skinless corn into a paste, or masa. Today in Mexico's small towns most women get their masa by taking corn to the town molino, an electric mill where the corn is ground in a matter of seconds, a tiny bit of water is added, and the masa emerges as tortilla dough. "In Mexico City and in the urban areas, this is dying out, but in the countryside, this is still a way of life," says Magda Bogin, who runs Cocinar Mexicano, a cooking school in Tepoztlan, Mexico. "In the countryside, there's a fierce and political pride about corn that's ancestral. Everybody grows their own corn." (Disclaimer: This cowgirl doesn't — I buy ready-made masa.)
Enlarge Traditionally the masa was patted by hand — 30 times, according to Mexican cuisine matriarch Diana Kennedy in her book The Cuisines of Mexico — in order to make a flat, round tortilla. Later came the wooden tortilla press, and later still, a metal press, which is how they're usually made at home today. The corn dough discs are cooked for about 20 seconds on each side on a heavy cast-iron griddle called a comal, though any heavy-duty skillet will do.
Mexican cuisine purists scoff at flour tortillas, which emerged later, in the northern parts of Mexico, where the land was too dry for growing corn. But most Mexican food lovers have no such pretensions. The rising star of Mexican cuisine, flour tortillas are now more popular than bagels, pita, or any other ethnic bread in the United States, making them the No. 2 type of bread sold in the country, right after the sliced white stuff.
It's no wonder. Both corn and flour tortillas are low in fat, sodium, and calories (for a 6-inch round, 60 for corn, 115 for flour). They're easy to use, fun to eat, and they're crumb-free, which is why flour tortillas have been used on NASA Shuttle missions since 1985. And did I say versatile? Stuff a flour tortilla with some grilled veggies, spinach, and hummus, and you've got a super-healthy wrap. Throw it on the griddle or comal stuffed with chicken or steak and cheese for a quesadilla, or with scrambled eggs for a breakfast taco. Slice up stale corn tortillas (as you would old bread) and bake them in the oven for crispy strips to top salads or soups. Or cut into triangles to fry or bake for your own chips (which is, in fact, how the tortilla chip came to be). Or simply toast and serve open face with frijoles, cheese, shredded lettuce, and salsa for a healthier tostada.
Not cowboy enough? Throw a sack of tortillas in your saddlebag. Warm a flour tortilla over the campfire for a few seconds till it puffs up. Slather with a little butter and cinnamon and sugar and down it with your cowboy coffee — the easiest Tex-Mex breakfast you ever got out of your bedroll for.
Ellise Pierce is the Cowgirl Chef. Watch for her food stories, recipes, and cooking tips in C&I.
TORTILLAS FOR THE AGES
When the Spanish explorer Cortés and his conquistadors came to the New World in search of gold, they also found a wealth of new foods, including corn. Maize — and the tortillas made from it — was an Aztec staple. And tortillas are now one of ours: The Tortilla Industry Association (TIA) estimates that in the United States alone, the tortilla industry (tortillas, tortilla chips, tostada shells, and taco shells) has become a $6 billion-a-year industry.
TOOLS
Tortilla press
Whether made of wood, aluminum, or cast iron (my personal favorite), a tortilla press, (tortilladora in Spanish), is an indispensable tool when making corn tortillas. Because the press isn't something that you want dough to touch (these are usually painted rather haphazardly with silver paint so the cast iron won't rust), either slide a plastic bag over the bottom portion and another over the flap, or — this is what I prefer — use pieces of wax paper to press the dough between. To make a tortilla with a press, pinch off a bit of the dough, roll it into a ball the size of a golf ball (for a 6-inch press), put the dough in the center of the press, and smash it down. If the tortilla is still a bit too thick, just take your rolling pin, and with the dough still in the wax paper, roll it out a bit.
Comal
There's nothing like a cast-iron comal for cooking tortillas, roasting chiles, and making and serving fajitas. With no high sides to get in the way, tortilla-flipping is a snap, as is anything that requires a deft hand. Plus, the sturdiness of the comal is reassuring. It reminds me of my mom's cast-iron skillets, and my own, too. The comal withstands high heat and can be put in the oven if you like. It's a great and inexpensive tool to add to your kitchen. You'll use it again and again. Pictured: IMUSA tortilla press and comal, available nationally at Amazon.com, Target, Kmart, Sears, and Kroger.
Issue: April 2009
