Homemade Tortillas and Decadent Desserts

I've been a little ambitious lately. Especially since I've been kicking around a couple of kitchen gadgets like the pasta machine that I'm finally putting to use. Another gadget is a little tortilla press that's put ideas of making my own tortillas into my head. I found a recipe for flour tortillas that had ingredients that I already own, and I saw something recently with Bobby Flay or Rick Bayless using one of those presses, so I was inspired! Now this isn't something I looked in to extensively (for instance, I didn't even look at that link to see that flour tortillas are typically made with a rolling pin!). The recipe itself is a basic dough:

Flour Tortillas

3 c. flour

2 ts. baking powder

1 ts. salt

cut 4-6 Tb. vegetable shortening (I used about 5 Tb.)

1 1/4 c. warm water

The instructions I jotted down said to combine the dry ingredients, mix in the shortening until it's like a meal, and then to dump the water in all at once and mix it into a dough quickly. Then to knead the dough until it's no longer sticky, cover it, and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Then pinch off 1" balls of dough and roll it in your hands into fat disks. Let the dough disks rest another 10 minutes, then with a wooden pin, roll them out into tortillas on a floured surface until they're pretty thin (the thinner and more circular, the better. But don't fret. It all tastes the same!). While you're rolling these out, heat a dry pan or skillet and cook your tortilla about 30 seconds on each side. You'll see the tortilla starting to puff up and blister. This is a good thing.

When you flip it over, you'll see it looks like a charmingly rustic version of what you get in a store!

Of course, I'm leaving out how sticky my dough was. And how, like the gringa I am, I tried to press out my tortillas with the tortilladora. I mean I've had it for years without ever using it! I even used plastic so the dough wouldn't stick to the press! Then Zips came into the kitchen, told me to lighten up, and grabbed a dough ball and a rolling pin and said I wanna try.

As you can see, the little round ones are a bit too thick to pass as tortillas (as one of my dear friends cautioned me, "don't make them too thick and end up with fry bread!")-- but brushed with a little butter and drizzled with honey or cinnamon sugar, they're JUST FINE!

The tortillas were destined for greater things. I've never made fajitas, but I have to say this worked out great! I just sauteed some green and red peppers with onion, and then added some "beef-less strips" (Trader Joe's has good ones, Morningstar has some too) with just some fajita seasoning and cumin. Everyone loved it and we'll be adding it to the menu more often. I didn't even want to add the guacamole, sour cream, or cheese. It was that good.

And the latest on the decadent dessert front is that tonight I decided to make Bananas Foster. If your household is anything like mine, there comes a time when your fruit bowl only has one thing left: bananas. Sure they were light greenish yellow when you bought them. They had a nice bite in your cereal, but yesterday or the day before, they reached that point when no one is going to want to eat them. They're not black yet. But the only one in the house going for them is that damn fly you can't get rid of. Just a one-way train to banana bread. So since I had 3 that were speckled with brown and soft to the touch, I decided to look for a recipe to use them in. This one is a blend of 3 recipes and the fancy restaurant around here that does a whole floor show (table-side preparation with flambe) and charges you per person when you order. Even though bananas cost less than sixty cents a pound. Oh, and you don't have to light the sauce on fire with this. Your eyebrows are safe.

Bananas Foster

2 Tb. butter (I use Earth Balance margarine)

3 Tb. brown sugar

healthy dash of cinnamon-- you can always add more

2 Tb. rum

1-2 Tb. fresh squeezed orange juice (I had half an orange and gave it a squeeze)

(When I make it again, I think I'll do that with a lemon too)

3 bananas, sliced (not too thin)

Melt the butter and stir in the brown sugar, cinnamon, rum, orange juice. Let these mingle and begin to bubble. Once it looks nice and saucy, add the bananas. Cook until bananas are heated through. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Pass out from endorphins and sugar high. Enjoy!

Breakfast Quesadillas: Good Idea? or a Great Idea?

This morning was crazy exciting. We had planned on having a yard sale today (saturday) to downsize a little before our impending move (next week!) (I haven't hosted a yard sale in over 8 years!). But we only decided at the very last minute to actually got through with it. So on Thursday I posted an ad on craigslist with a couple of bigger items we were selling and our address. Friday I fretted about not having advertised it in the local paper and not buying any posterboard to make signs. And after a fitful night of not sleeping and generally worrying that no one would come after all the trouble of tagging and finding surfaces to use as tables, we decided not to have the yard sale after all. But this morning, there were pickup trucks and early birds waiting a full hour before we had intended on "opening"-- so I went out to tell them all we were postponing our sale. But a frenzy ensued, and we ended up selling stuff for the next hour and a half before toting the scraps leftover to the local animal shelter thrift shop.

And then we feasted. Zips requested a special breakfast (it was all over by 10 am!) so I made her her favorite: breakfast tacos. That's just an egg scrambled with some chopped morningstar farms veggie breakfast sausage patty in a heated flour tortilla, with some salsa on top. The hot sauce of choice in this case is Tapatio ("es una salsa...muy salsa!"):

but since I'm not really interested in eating eggs right now, I decided to mix it up a little, and heated a tortilla in an unoiled nonstick pan, sprinkled a little cheese on half of it, and a little of the scrambled eggs and veggie sausage, folded it over again, and used a smaller pan to press it (macguyver panini!) as it heated. Then I flipped it over and toasted the other side too.

Now I have a new favorite breakfast too when Zips demands her tacos! I've been rewarded with a homemade "java chip"-esque frappuccino. Mmmmm. I may have to get Zips to write out the recipe for me!

Very Easy Jicama Slaw

After writing out and posting photos of our salsa verde perfecto and guacamole, I've been salivating for a big taco extravaganza. As we were getting produce for dinner, I couldn't resist picking up a jicama, even though I've very rarely eaten it at home (what have I bought, like, one in my life?). Not knowing what exactly I was going to do with it, but positive it would be delicious, I brought it home and started looking for recipes for a jicama slaw. Frankly, they all looked weird (Bobby Flay's includes honey, Emeril uses yogurt!?) or really over-dressed (6 Tb Olive Oil??!). So I decided I'd start with the Mexican slaw recipe I worked out copying one of our favorite local place's slaw, and then modify it from there if it was too boring. It turned out to be delicious as is!

Jicama Slaw

1 jicama (peeled, julienned)

1 carrot (ditto)

1/4 small red cabbage (chopped)

1/2 c. cilantro (chopped)

And for the dressing, whisk together:

3/4 c. rice vinegar

2 Tb. vegetable oil

1 1/2 Tb. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp black pepper

(This dressing is good on just finely sliced green cabbage too. That's our La Posta-style slaw ). Zips is in the kitchen right now slicing avocados. I gotta go!

Tiny Yukon Golds, Salsa Verde, and other Summer Magic

I know it's probably not the smartest thing in the world to plant a whole bed of baby yukon gold potatoes in the middle of summer in southern New Mexico, but I was so excited when I saw them for sale at our local garden/hardware store, I couldn't resist. Even more thrilling was when they emerged from little eyelets into full grown plants. Almost ALL of them!!

Now I'm just waiting around for them to grow grow grow those magical tubers. Hopefully their harvest will happen to coincide with when we have to move (about two weeks). The other day I noticed a couple of the plants was looking wilty-- okay more like on death's door, so I couldn't resist feeling around its roots and voila!

Potatoes!!!!! Now I realize they're not going to win any ribbons at the state fair, but it brings back that amazing feeling I had when we had a plot at the community gardens in Indiana, and I grew a whole row of potatoes, soybeans, more tomatoes than I knew what to do with, celery, brussels sprouts, and what not (see the earliest postings, it's part of why I started this blog). I GREW FOOD in the GROUND! And I'm going to EAT IT!

One of my summer readings is Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She writes in the very first pages "We wanted to live in a place that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles up out of the ground." I understand that sentiment, even after living only 2 years in the dry southwest. But it's nice to see that we can indulge green-thumbed desires here. Knowing that we'll have to pack up and move a little ways down the road, we're trying to emotionally part with the lovely backyard that we fell in love with, and planted all our tomatoes, lettuces, basils and catnips in pots.

In addition to my tiny potato excitement, Zips is thrilled to be growing several tiny tomatillo plants. When we had our garden plot in Indiana, we had more tomatillos early on than we knew what to do with. I wrote long ago about our "salsa verde crudo." But now Zips has perfected her Salsa Verde:

Zipper's Salsa Verde Perfecto

2 lb. tomatillos (husked, rinsed, chopped)

1 medium onion

1-2 whole serrano chiles

1/2 c. cilantro

1-2 cloves garlic

juice of 1 lime

salt & (secret ingredient) ground celery seed (or celery salt)!

Chuck everything into your food processor and chop until everything is well combined. It may help to start chopping the harder foods first (onion, garlic, chiles) then add the juicy parts that you wouldn't want to accidently liquify (tomatillo), before adding and adjusting the cilantro, lime, ground celery seed and salt. I've never posted a photo of our Salsa Verde before, because we usually eat it all before I've had a chance (I once posted a photo of an empty glass bowl). But we've discovered that this actually keeps in the fridge pretty well, and if the serranos start off too spicy, it actually mellows in the fridge.

The other magical summer staple that Zips has utterly perfected lately is her heavenly guacamole. The magic, in our case, is in the molcajete she bought me last christmas:
I had a revelation (way too late) that those little black plastic tripod bowls that you sometimes get salsa in at Mexican restaurants are, basically, fake molcajetes. So this is a rough, heavy mortar and pestle made of volcanic stone that you season by grinding rice and rock salt until the inside starts to smooth out. Then you grind raw garlic cloves, cumin, salt into a paste and let it sit 24 hours. If you aren't driven mad with how good it smells, it will give your guacamole the most amazing flavors. We use avocado, lime, and just a little onion, tomato, cilantro, serrano, and garlic and a dash of salt (no measurements you cry? tweak em till it's perfect!). If we have a bag of the local tortillaria's chips, and we make both of these, it will be a good night indeed!

New Year! New Books! New Soups!

It's hard for me to believe that it's been six full months that we've lived here. Half a year in our new life, new job, new home, new time zone. It's lovely not to be cold in the winter. This is a new pleasure. In fact, one of my resolutions for the new year is to let the cats roam in the backyard when they ask (see example below)... okay, maybe once a day or so is more realistic. Already, Bijoux (below, far right) has abused this resolution by defiantly jumping the fence and tight-rope walking the stone wall between our backyard neighbors' yards. I had to climb into someone else's property to retrieve him. Thank goodness he didn't get too far! Everyone else is positively sedate by comparison. Zipper (you must recognize her by now) likes to chase crickets and moths and dust motes. All of these usually outsmart her. Mini (above) is happy to luxuriate on the hammock, soaking in the sun. She's clearly the smart one.
The holidays have been nice. Quiet, with the exception of a nasty cold that went through each member of the household. Some wonderful presents I received (aside from a remote controlled R2-D2 that promises to bring me a can of Coke from across the room when I command) include Keri Smith's awesome guide to life The Guerilla Art Kit; Lotta Jansdotter's Lotta Prints, Zakka Sewing by Therese Laskey, Chika Mori, Yoko Inoue; Printing by Hand by Lena Corwin and Thayer Allyson Gowdy; and Esther Smith's beautiful How to Make Books. Clearly I have work to do so that I can get to doing fun work! Here are my most favorite etsy-oriented crafty books. My kingdom for more time!
Over the holiday break, we took a brief excursion to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It was so cold, my favorite part was actually huddling up in the guest bedroom of my parents' house watching WALL*E on our laptop. The (only) other bright spot was a sopa de tortilla tradicional that Zips ordered at a restaurant on the plaza in Santa Fe. It helped thaw us out from the icy streets of the historic downtown. I'd never tried it, and Zips was feeling adventurous. Happily, I memorized the ingredients listed in the menu, and cobbled together some recipes that pretty closely approximates the zippy, spicy, smokey soup we had!

Tortilla Soup:

2-3 poblano chiles-- roasted, peeled, seeded, diced

1/2 c. green chiles (mild to medium) (I used Bueno frozen mild. I'm kicking myself for not being more adventurous earlier in the season and buying and roasting them fresh! Lesson learned!)

1 clove garlic (or about 1tsp)-- minced

2 Tb. olive oil

1 28oz. can whole tomatoes-- including juice

2 Qt. vegetable broth (2 boxes or 4 cans)

1 tsp. oregano

2 Tb. cumin

2 Tb. chili powder

1 c. diced onion

10-12 small corn tortillas-- torn into squares

Saute the chiles and garlic in olive oil. Add tomatoes, juice, broth, and spices, and bring to a simmer. Add tortilla pieces to soup and simmer until they dissolve completely. This will thicken the broth and add the wonderful corn tortilla aroma to the soup. Blend with an immersion blender to desired consistency. I added a can of sweet corn after blending. Garnish with slices of avocado, sour cream, cilantro. Other recipes serve with a wedge of lime, shredded cheese, and fried tortilla strips.

The other offering I have to get us through winter is a vegetarian version (yay!) of one of my favorite Thai soups-- Tom Kha-- usually tom kha gai or chicken coconut soup-- I think this one is Tom Kha Hed-- or coconut soup with mushrooms. Whatever you want to call it.. it's delicious.

Tom Kha (Thai Coconut-Lemongrass Soup)

1 1/2 c. coconut milk (1 can)

1 Tb. fresh grated ginger

2 tsp. lime zest

2 2" pieces of fresh lemongrass (bruise the pieces by whacking them with the back or flat of a knife)

3 c. vegetable broth

2 tsp. sugar

1 Tb. soy sauce

lime juice

Combine and simmer, then add your choice of:

diced firm tofu

bamboo shoots

fresh mushrooms

cilantro

green onion