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Northern Style Flour Tortillas

Northern Style Flour Tortillas

INGREDIENTS - makes 24 to 30 tortillas

4 cups all purpose flour (avoid flours with high protein content, anything under 13%)
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup vegetable shortening, lard, or room temperature butter
1 3/4 cup hot water

Mix dry ingredients. Combine flour, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.
Add shortening. Add vegetable shortening (or whatever fat you are using) and rub it in with your fingers. It should resemble sand with a few pea-sized pieces of fat.
Knead. Add water and mix to form a wet dough. It will be sticky. Turn out onto a unfloured work surface and knead for 5 minutes. It will be really sticky at first but eventually will form a smooth dough. Use a bench scraper to scrape the dough off the counter as you go if necessary.
Let rest. Grease a large bowl place the dough inside and turn to coat in the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest 20 minutes.
Divide the dough. Pinch off a small piece of dough (a digital scale is really handy for this). The size of the piece will depend on how large your comal or skillet you will be cooking the tortillas on is (a little bigger than a golf ball) which give us 8-inch tortillas. Roll into smooth balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover with a clean kitchen cloth.
Heat the pan. Place a comal or other nonstick skillet over medium heat and let warm at least 3 minutes before you cook any tortillas on it.
Roll the tortillas. Place a ball of dough on a lightly floured counter and flour a rolling pin. Roll each ball into a very thin circle. You should be able to see your hand through it. The thinner the better.
Cook. As you roll place each tortilla on the hot, dry skillet and cook undisturbed until toasted and bubbles cover the surface, about 1 minute. Flip and cook another minute on the other side. Keep warm in a clean towel and repeat with remaining dough.

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Entomatadas alla Pollock

This simple homey Mexican recipe is a comfort food for all who know it, entomatadas like enchiladas or enfrijoladas or enmoladas, all carry the same idea but a different sauce.

Entomatadas have a simple non spicy tomato sauce that reminds one of hugs from la abuela!

Entomatadas alla Pollock

Tortillas Komali 15cm Tradicional

3 Chile Guajillo

2 Chile Arbol

3 tomatoes

1/2 onion

1 garlic

Oil for frying

salt to taste

Fillings: shredded chicken, cheese, or beans

Toppings: crema, chile oil, lettuce, crumbly cheese

Instructions:

1. Prepare your salsa, clean your chiles by taking out the seeds and veins, soak them in hot water until soft. Add all tomatoes, onion, garlic and chiles in your blender and blend until very smooth, salt to taste.

2. Fry off your salsa until it gets a bright red color, then fry off your tortillas until they become flexible and soft. Set them aside.

3. Set up your plate with some salsa at the bottom, dip the tortillas in the salsa and fill them with your desired filling

4. Top them with more salsa and your desired toppings.

Provecho!

Abuela’s Tip: Anytime you’re making salsa Macha or chile oil in your blender is a good time to make this simple tomato sauce, since your blender will be coated with an amazing residual goodness, blend the tomatoes/onion/garlic to clean out your blender and make this recipe without using extra Chiles.

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Easy Bean Soup or Tlatlapas

Why on this hot Summer day are we craving soup, you may ask?

As early as I remember my mother bless her heart, always decided to cook lentil soup (which I hated as a child, now I love 😆), and I guess the tradition stuck because on this hot summer day I’m here stirring and stirring my Mexican frijoles soup.

This soup is traditionally called Tlatlapas which is an ‘easier’ take on cooking dry beans from scratch (that’ll really make your kitchen hot) which I always find way to time consuming and not very satisfying.

Recipe:

Easy Bean Soup or Tlatlapas

500gr of dry beans (any will do)

1/2 onion

1 garlic clove

2 chile arbol

1 chile morita

12 cups of broth or water

olive oil

salt to taste

1. Heat your pan on medium heat and toast your dry beans on low heat, let them cool off and grind them as fine as powder.

2. Fry off your onion and garlic then add the bean powder.

3. Stir until evenly coated and start adding the liquid cup by cup.

4. Stir occasionally until you achieve an even smooth consistency, salt to taste.

Enjoy! Provecho!

There are a lot of known toppings for this soup like nopales in strips, fried strips of chile or epazote. We love this soup with very thin tortilla strips and a mild chile oil.

Abuela's Note: If you don't have a mortero or metate (the traditional way of grinding grains and beans) you can use a blender. If the powder is not fine enough, cook it through as much as you can and blend it until smooth.

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Blog / cheese

Tamales Dulces con ate de membrillo y queijo de azeitaõ

Because we know you can't get enough of our sweetness, here we have one of our favorite savory sweet tamales with quince paste and in ode to our host country of Portugal, we will use a very traditional sheep's cheese called queijo de azeitaõ.

Ingredients

Makes about 12 tamales

30 corn husks

2 cups / 260g masa harina, mixed with 1 to 1¼ cups / 240 to 300ml water (as directed on this page)

5 Tbsp / 70g butter, softened

⅓ cup / 65g granulated sugar

6 oz / 170g queijo de azeitaõ cheese

6 oz / 170g ate de membrillo / quince paste

Greek yogurt for garnish

Directions

Begin by placing your corn husks to soak in a large bowl of warm water to soften while you prepare the ingredients.

Place the fresh masa or mixed masa harina in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or, if you prefer to do this by hand with a whisk, in a large bowl. You want to whip up your masa to get as much air into it as you can, making it fluffy. The more it’s worked, the lighter the tamales will taste. After beating it for 3 to 4 minutes, add the butter 1 Tbsp at a time and continue to whip it until it’s well incorporated. Then add the sugar and mix for an additional 1 to 2 minutes.

Cut your azeitaõ cheese and ate de membrillo into 12 equal logs, approximately 2 x ½ inches / 5cm x 12mm. They should look like half of a string cheese stick. It’s not crucial that they be perfectly tidy and uniform as they will be tucked inside the tamales; you just want them to fit within the masa and for each tamal to have about the same amount of both cheese and quince paste.

Take your softened corn husks out of the water they’ve been soaking in, squeezing out any excess moisture. Open one up and place “about 3 Tbsp / 55g of the masa mixture in the center of the husk. Use the back of a spoon or a spatula to spread it into a rectangle that’s about 3 x 2 inches / 7.5 x 5cm and about ½ inch / 12mm tall. It doesn’t need to be precise, just big enough to hold the fillings with enough corn husk on all sides so that you can wrap it up and no filling will ooze out. Place one log of cheese and one log of quince paste at the center of the masa and then bring the sides of the corn husk together, sealing the filling inside the masa. Now fold up the bottom of the corn husk so that the whole tamal is contained “inside the corn husk, then roll it up from the side.

The tamal should be “closed” on the bottom and open on top. Use a second corn husk to bind it further. There really isn’t a science to wrapping tamales. What’s important is that the insides stay as tight as possible and that no masa comes out during steaming. Repeat this process with the rest of the masa and filling. If you want, you can cut one of the corn husks into ribbons and use these ribbons to tie up the tamales for extra insurance.

Once you’ve finished, place a steamer basket in a stockpot and add 2 to 3 inches / 5 to 7.5cm of water. Place all of your tamal packages in the pot and bring to a simmer. Cover the pot and let the tamales steam for 20 to 25 minutes, monitoring about halfway through the process to make sure that there is still a good inch or two of water at the bottom of the pan and adding more water if necessary. After 20 minutes, take one out and open it up to test if it’s done. Cut into one with a knife to ensure that the masa has the consistency of firm polenta and doesn’t ooze at all; the halves should cut cleanly and stay intact. Serve with a spoonful of the yogurt.

As with savory tamales, these can be cooked, stored in the refrigerator, and then reheated simply by steaming them again, and they will taste just as good as when they were freshly made.

Recipe Courtesy of Gabriela Camara's “My Mexico City Kitchen" Cookbook.

#TamalesMexicanos #NavidadesMexicanas #ChristmasSpirit #AtedeMembrillo #MaketheMasa

Publicado en 29 mayo 2021

Casa Mexicana

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Recipes

Northern Style Flour Tortillas

Entomatadas alla Pollock

Easy Bean Soup or Tlatlapas

Blog / cheese

Tamales Dulces con ate de membrillo y queijo de azeitaõ

Ingredients

Directions