Friday, June 19, 2009

Homemade Flour Tortillas

Warning. Trust me on this one. These will ruin any former enjoyment you ever had of store-bought flour tortillas. There is simply no comparison. They are easy to make, and the more you make, the better you will get at it. I will admit, the art of making them perfectly round, well, I don't have that part down just yet. But then I've been making my own pie crusts a lot longer, and they don't turn out all neat like the ones on TV either. But they still taste good! And they ARE getting rounder each time!
Necessary equipment:
a rolling pin: note. I have a cut piece of a garden tool handle that I find is a lot better for rolling tortillas than my regular rolling pin
some sort of griddle than can be heated to a high temperature. Non-stick surface is NOT ok for this. A "lid" from an old cast iron stove, or a cast iron griddle. I use one of those cast iron griddles that fits over 2 burners.
Ingredients:
If you have a scale, you need 500 grams of flour. 4 cups more or less.
a heaping 1/4 cup of lard. Don't go all wobbly on me here. Lard. Gotta be lard.
Do not be afraid!
Back to your scale, 17 grams of kosher salt. Doesn't HAVE to be kosher salt, but I love the taste of it so that's what I use. Around a Tablespoon. Regular granulated salt has a finer grain, and you might want to use less.
You can use a pastry blender, 2 knives, a fork, whatever. But you have to work the lard into the flour. I prefer just to use my hands.
Now add between 1 and 1-1/2 cups HOT water. Mix this up with your hands. Resist the urge to add too much water. Dough should form together, but not be sticky. Turn out and knead on counter just a few times, gently. Now leave it on the counter and cover it with the bowl. Let it set 30 minutes or so.
After the dough is relaxed, heat your griddle. Then divide into 10-12 balls and shape into a disk and set aside. When your done pre-shaping the last one, you can start rolling the first one. Keep the rest covered with a kitchen towell. Roll them out into as close to a circle as you can.
The griddle is ready when water dropped onto it immediatly evaporates.
Use no grease, and be very careful. Plop the first one down onto the hot griddle. Let it cook a few seconds and flip it with a spatula. Continue flipping until done on both sides. They will have dark brown spots across their surface.
I lay mine on a towell and flip half the towell over them to keep them covered.
Eat while still warm or seal up in a zip-bag and refridgerate.
Next time I make a batch, I will add some pictures.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Carne Guisada

My middle girl loves carne guisada. Its almost always what she orders at Mexican Food restaurants.
So, I set out through the deep waves, surfing the internet for a good carne guisada for her. There are as many ways to make carne guisada as there are cooks and food blogs!
So, I took what sounded good from several places, combined it with what I knew her likes and dislikes were, and created my own version of carne guisada.
Whoops. Forgot something! What IS carne guisada, anyway? I hear its not such a common dish outside of Texas.
Carne guisada is literally "stewed meat." We have ran across a few places that make it from pork, but usually it is beef, and that is what my daughter likes, so this one is beef. Beef cooked in a gravy with (not too hot for her) peppers, onions and a few spices.

Here's how I made it:
In a heavy (well seasoned cast iron is best) dutch oven, in lard (yes, LARD) saute 1 onion, diced, 1/2 or so bell pepper, and 1 or 2 jalapenos, all diced. When its about done, add a couple cloves minced garlic.
Cut up about 4 pounds of round steak, and dredge it through some all-purpose flour.
Remove the onion mixture from the pot and add more lard if needed, then throw in the meat and brown it. Add "some" cumin, and 4 cups beef broth. Now put a lid on that puppy and throw him in the oven at a real low heat, around 200*, for several hours. Get it out of there and give it a good stir once in a while and check its progress. The meat will be very tender when its done.

Serve with homemade flour tortillas, (have I posted that recipe yet?)
Homesick Texan's Mexican Rice and homemade refried beans.

Sourdough Bread


Several months back I posted about a new book that had come out, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.' Great book, I highly recommend it.
That book inspired me to get back into more "hands on" bread baking, and I ran across a great site for bakers, The Fresh Loaf. Through that site, and a couple of excellent books I have gotten,
(Dan DiMuzio's Bread Baking) and (Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread) I have learned a lot of new info on making some very tasty "artisan" bread.
There are many opinions as to what constitutes "artisan bread", but to me it is bread made by a slower process than what I had learned when I first started making bread 20-some years ago. Then, the idea was to make the bread rise as fast as you could. With artisan the emphasis is often on slow fermentation.... allowing the bread to slowly develop, bringing out the subtle flavors of the grains. The exact opposite of "fast food." Often the loaves are hand shaped and baked on a stone instead of in a pan, though that is not always the case. I believe to, at least for myself, there is an emphasis on natural ingredients, you won't find the dough conditioners, high fructose corn syrup, or unpronounceable stuff that you find in store bought, mass produced bread.
Artisan bread can practically stand alone, the center of a meal instead of something to hold a sandwich together or slather with peanut butter and jelly.
Several times over the years I have tried to get a sourdough starter going. Each time I failed. I tried again a couple weeks ago. Due in large part to info and advice I received from The Fresh Loaf, and the books I now have, this time my starter succeeded! Its alive and well sitting on my kitchen counter.
Yesterday I used it to make a loaf of sourdough bread. I used Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough and I am pleasantly surprised not only in how it looks but also in the taste. This one is a keeper for sure!