Masa, Masa, Masa why did I not know about Masa before I went to Mexico. It is one
of the most key ingredients that make the Tamales, the AtoleT the tortillas
taste so good. It's not easy to get here in Australia, I found a company called El
Cielo, I'll leave a link down below for those in Australia, it is the ingredient
that makes the difference, it makes the flavor of fresh tortillas. We can't get
it fresh here but if you're interested I am going to be showing you how to make
nixtamalization on Steve's kitchen in a later episode but in the meantime we're
using dried and today I'm going to show you how to make delicious tortillas and
very simply here on Steve's kitchen.
Now we are going to use a cup of our Masa flour, I'm going to loosely pack it into
the cup and a cup makes about 8 tortilla, now I'm just making 8 tortillas today.
It's just Michele and I, if I was doing this for the family I'd probably double
maybe even triple this and you might hear the aircon blowing in the
background, it's as hot as Mexico today here in Australia. Don't under season
the flour I'm going to go with about half a teaspoon of salt and with a cup
of flour I'm going to add 2/3 of a cup of water. Pour that in with the Masa and
then take a fork, now it is going to look a little bit dry at this point. Unlike a
wheat flour this looks as if it's not going to pull together, so it looks a
little bit like a pebbly dry sand. So get the fork out of there and then just
start to draw this flour together and just pinch it, within a very short time
all the loose flour should come away from the side of the bowl and we have a
dough that feels a little cross between kinetic sand and playdough.
Now some people add a little bit of corn oil in, just a tiny bit mind you, it does
depend on the humidity of where you are as well as, to whether you need to adjust
the water slightly. What we want to do though is put this in a bowl, now cover
it over with a damp towel and let the flour bloom a little bit. We want our
dough to sit for 15-20 minutes which gives me time to talk about a press. If
you have a tortilla press it makes a life a lot easier.
This is actually an Indian Puri press, I can't get the tortilla presses here in
Australia but they work on the same principle, putting leverage down to
squeeze the tortillas nice and flat. It is possible to roll them with a rolling
pin, it makes it quite hard work or you could put them between two sheets of
plastic and push it down, a casserole dish or a big cast-iron pot. Now talking
about sheets of plastic, I like to get this plastic, you get in the butchers
section in supermarkets or from butchers themselves. Its food safe, it doesn't
stick, it's really fantastic. Some people use ziplock bags, where they
just cut them open they work well but trust me, this butchers paper or plastic,
it's not paper, it works fantastically well. So our dough now is lovely and
malleable, it's not sticky and when I say about the flour blooming, its absorbing
that moisture, what we're going to do now is just
divide this up into eight pieces and you can do this roughly by hand, by just
dividing each piece of dough into quarters and then just squeezing the
last piece, until we've got two pieces that are about the size of a ping-pong ball.
Now I like to roll them together to get them fairly smooth but it's also
important to keep them covered with a damp cloth in between any parts of the
preparation. So that you can make sure that the dough doesn't dry out too much.
Now if you want to be super accurate you could weigh these pieces of dough out
but over time you get used to making them and they don't have to be exactly
perfect. So eight pieces of dough I'm just keeping them covered and keeping
them moist. I love this little Puri press, when we're ready, a piece of paper onto
the base of the press, so I like to put the ball into the center of the press.
Now you will find that it will be a little uneven as you press it, you could
move it slightly towards the back, pop that down, a gentle press not all the way
down, just yet because what I want to do then is turn the tortilla around, so now
the backs at the front, fronts at the back. Pop that down and give it a much
firmer press and what we're going to have is this beautiful tortilla, it
should be paper thin or reasonably thin and holding together nice and firm like
that. Now they are crumbly, if you actually try to fold a tortilla
it will crack quite easily, this is not like wheat flour with the gluten that
holds together you do need to cook this to make it bind together. Now in Mexico
they cook the tortillas on a comal or a flat steel base, so try to use
something similar like a cast iron pot and we want to bring it up to a nice hot
heat. Now I've just brought the tortilla over to the pan, now cooking a tortilla
is a little bit like searing a steak. We pop it down face down and at first the
tortilla won't slide around, we just want to seal a little dry skin on that side
of the tortilla, this only takes about ten or fifteen seconds. Then what I'm
going to do is just lift the tortilla up, flip it over.
You see it's got a dry surface on this side, what we're doing now is creating
the skin that's going to create our lovely little pocket. So we have to do
both sides, the other side of this now is just searing, so quickly there I've
seared both sides of the tortilla. Now I'm going to turn it round, you can leave
it but if you just tap down on the corners, what you're going to see is it's
going to break, can you see the pocket starting to form there, the tortilla is
going to fill up with air and if you like your tortillas to be nice and soft
we don't want to overcook these. So I'm just going to do probably about 50
seconds at most and then this is the final turn I'm just pushing with a
spatula or you can use a spoon and just push around the outside, turning it as
you go and that's that lovely big air pocket there, that is perfect. We've
separated through the center of the tortilla, I can now lift that up, it's
piping hot and I'm just going to pop them and stack them on a plate. Now as
you stack the tortillas they'll help each other, basically keep warm and also
to softened as they cool down and once I've got a system rolling, I'm baking one
in the pan behind me whilst I'm flattening out the second tortilla.
You'll get used to it after a time, so pop it into the pan, we turn it over and
we're just getting that little skin, like I say it's only a few moments in the pan,
maybe another five or ten seconds on that side, then I'm going to turn it over
and at this point I'm just going to twist the tortilla, you can see it's
puffing up beautifully already, I'm just going to twist the tortilla around a
little bit, this one barely needs any pushing at all and that's looking
absolutely perfect. Now if I turn that over and just do the other side, get a
little bit of color on it. Man it smells great in here,
we've got these beautiful soft tortillas, they've all got those lovely pockets in.
Imagine a couple of these, some carnitas in the street, takes me back to Mexico.
Probably what we're going to do is put a bit of cheese and maybe some refried
beans, make some quesadillas. This is not alchemy but it's close to alchemy, this
is food at it's very best, beautiful soft tortillas
made with Masa. Give this a try if you can get hold of Masa,
let me know what you think, if you make these all the time you can comment on my
recipe, see whether I've done it right but if you want to see them made with a
real fresh Masa, wait towards the end of the series and I'll be sharing that with
you at that time. Now in the meantime I'm just going to tuck in, these are super hot, have
a beautiful bit of flour or Masa tortilla. Here we go, lovely,
you can't tell there's no gluten in that. You know it's great, we'll be doing a lot
of great recipes throughout the Mexican series so I hope you'll enjoy them,
don't forget to subscribe, hit the bell so you get notifications and I will see
you again, very shortly for some fun in Steve's kitchen,
take care