It begins with a large tortilla.
Cut a strip from the middle where it's widest.
And free this long rectangle from the useless wedges
that surround it.
This is how we start our journey towards creating
the perfect food.
The hardest part is folding an angle of equal thirds.
But if you folded a piece of paper
into thirds for a letter or a pamphlet,
you know the principal, approximate, and then
adjust until you reach equality.
In the case of the tortilla, to get an equilateral triangle,
you fold an angle rather than an edge.
Be sure your folds meet at a point.
One corner of a triangle.
Unlike paper, this soft and delicious tortilla
is forgiving, adjusting easily rather than
creasing and crumpling.
Continue folding one triangle on top of another.
Pinch each fold to give it a crease.
10 triangles are necessary.
Remove the extra.
Arrange the strip of triangles into a hexagon.
Note that the folds naturally want
to go the same way you creased them.
This will help you to arrange the overlap so that it
is symmetric, woven together in the same way you would fold
the flaps on top of a box to support each other.
In paper, I might use 9 triangles, and then
a piece of tape.
For tortilla, use 10 and attach the first to the last.
Score the tortilla lightly with a knife to ruff it up.
And then use your fingers to wet it with water.
The water combines with the flour in the tortilla.
And by pressing the triangles firmly to one another,
they are effectively glued together.
Thus, a tortilla hexaflexagon is created.
It can be flexed by pinching two triangles together and pushing
in the opposite side to get a flat three armed shape.
Then opening up the inside.
However, it is imperfect.
For it is not yet delicious.
Luckily, there are several sophisticated tools
with which to remedy this problem.
The first of which is guacamole.
I start with the easily spreadable ingredients,
which can be folded flat into the hexaflexagon.
Flex it by lifting the three parts with the flappy folded
creases and fold them to the inside.
Then the bottom can be opened up.
And the flexagon is once again ready to be
piled with delicious ingredients.
The precious guacamole being stowed safely within the folds.
After adding beans and cheese, your hexaflexamexagon
is ready for consumption.
To eat, flex only halfway and bite the delicious exposed
triangular pockets of flex mex perfection.
As you can see, the ingredients tend
to leak slightly out of the folds of the flexagon.
This is expected and unavoidable,
as the nature of the burrito is to be a delicious leaking mess
regardless of whether it is cylindrical or hexaflexagonal.
As your next flex mex project, consider the humble crane
guarding her flavorful nest.