Corn Tortillas: or, Sometimes good things are waiting next to the street

Hooray for free things!

Corn Tortillas 2 cups corn masa 1½ cups water Mix the masa and water, stirring for 2 minutes. You should have a soft dough that doesn't stick to the hands. If it's dry and crumbly, mix in more water, one teaspoon at a time. Divide the dough into balls that weigh about 1 ounce each (about the size of ping-pong balls). Place a griddle or frying pan over medium-high heat. Put two sheets of thick plastic inside a tortilla press. If you don't have thick plastic wrap, you can cut off the sides of a gallon-sized ziploc bag. Place a dough ball between the plastic sheets and press it thin (about 5 inches in diameter). Lightly grease the pan, or spritz it with cooking spray. Carefully peel the tortilla off the plastic and cook it for two minutes, turning it every thirty seconds or so. As you're cooking, re-grease the pan whenever they start to stick, usually after every 3 or 4 tortillas. Source: Instructions on the back of Maseca corn masa

I finally own a tortilla press! My mother has her grandmother's. While she always lets us use it, it's one of the few things she will not let anyone take away from the house. I've been wanting my own for a while, but I've always felt that it is invalid to just buy a tortilla press. For reasons I can't explain, I think they are supposed to find you. 

I tried to speed up this process by asking various friends traveling to Mexico to bring one back with them (never mind that the supermarket I go to every week has them for a nearly forgettable price). But for some reason, no one wanted to do my shopping while they were taking baggage across international borders.

But a few nights ago when I was taking an evening walk, I passed a house with a folding table of stuff in the front yard with a sign that said FREE. I had no need for any of the slow cookers (they had an entire potluck's worth of them), but I found this. 

IT FINALLY HAPPENED!

 

Today we are making my mother's recipe for corn tortillas. By that I mean when I asked how to make them, she told me to just follow the directions on the bag. (Incidentally, this was also her answer when I asked how to make white rice.) I do like that since corn tortillas only contain corn flour and water, you don't need to worry about the dough toughening if you stir it too much. Or at least, things won't go awry unless you really overbeat it.

Now, the directions on the bag say to stir for two minutes. It turns out that when you first mix the cornmeal and water, they become a sort of slurry. But as you keep stirring, the cornmeal absorbs more of the water. After about two minutes, the former gritty sludge almost has the consistency of Play-Doh.

Now that our dough is ready, we are supposed to put sheets of heavy plastic into the press. Plastic wrap really won't work for this. Even if you can get it to stop sticking to itself, it is too flimsy. But if you (like most of us) don't keep food-grade acetate around the house, a gallon bag will work just fine after you cut off the top and sides. 

 

I actually learned that from Mom. I thought it was a shortcut she started doing to avoid having to deep-clean the press every single time. Then she told me over the phone that now that I have my own press, it's so much easier if I cut up a bag just like her grandmother did. So this is an heirloom cooking tip!

The directions tell us to roll these into one-ounce balls. I got out the scale for this, and it turns out that one ounce of dough is about the size of a ping-pong ball. So for those who don't have a kitchen scale at hand, now you know. 

The rest of this recipe is simple: place a dough ball on press, squish it down, then put it on a frying pan. I was unnerved at how perfectly round this came out. 

 

My great-grandmother's tortillas always came out in flawless circles. Up until now, mine always came out looking like each of the 50 states. Perhaps this is why this press found me. If I had just bought a press like a normal person, I might have ended up with amoebas instead of circles.

I should note that the tortillas are a bit tricky to get off of the plastic without ripping them. It's easier to take the whole dough-laden plastic, place it dough-side-down on your open hand, and then peel the plastic away.

I hate giving recipes that involve specialized supplies, so I really wanted to write that you don't need a tortilla press for these. I wanted to write that you can put the dough between two sheets of plastic and then press it with a heavy book or some other flat object. Or, I wanted to write that you can smash them flat with a two-handled pot, or use a rolling pin-- because even people who don't have a rolling pin can find some object that will suit the purpose. I tried every alternative I could think of, and none of them worked. But if you don't have quasi-spiritual views against buying tortilla presses, they're fairly inexpensive.

If you've only ever bought pre-packaged corn tortillas, you have no idea what you're missing. It's like tasting fresh vegetables when you've only had them canned. And if you don't have weird superstitions about how to get kitchen implements, tortilla presses are pretty easy to get. I see them on the pans-and-whisks aisle in most of the stores I go to. I won't say you owe it to yourself to learn about what you've missed, but I do think it's impossible to be happy with pre-packaged ones ever again.