Tuesday, April 24, 2012

If she can cook it so can I... Homemade Tortillas...


Today when I walked in the house after work, I was greeted with the most amazing smell... Sure, I was starving and almost anything edible smelling would of made me melt. Yet this was a winning smell because it was the smell of a dinner Cole had started in the crock pot before he left for work. It was a pork roast from the depths of our freezer that he lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and a taco seasoning pack. He said he also chopped up half a red onion and threw in a cup of water.
As I sat there salivating hours too early, I thought about the many possibilities pork left us. However, all I could think of was tacos. I love tacos. I love everything you put in tacos. I love Taco Bell and always will. I could eat tacos anytime of day everyday. I knew I wanted pork tacos and I also wanted them with flour tortillas. You see we have some frozen freezer-burnt corn tortillas in our fridge and I didn't want to use them. I sure as hell wasn't walking the babies to the store today because unlike yesterday, it was nasty outside. So I did the next best thing and googled how to make my own flour tortillas. That's when I found this lovely tutorial/recipe here called Annie's Eats. She does a great job of making them look easy to make. She also takes some really great pictures so be sure to check her out for a more detailed beautiful version.

OK let's get started. Let it be known that I cut her recipe in half because I have a small food processor that fits on my blender; not a big one. I also only have two and a half mouths to feed.

So here is my half version that yields about 6 tortillas
1.5 cups of flour
1 tsp of baking powder
.5 tsp of salt
2.5 Tbs of shortening
1/2 C of water

Put in all the dry ingredients into your  food processor and mix for a bit.

 Once it is mixed and crumbly add the water slowly until it forms a ball
 Like this....
bring the dough to a lightly floured surface and separate into 6 balls
 Flatten the dough balls into circles...
 Then roll them out. I was sloppy about this and didn't care how circular they were. I just wanted to put them in my mouth. (Annie has a sheet that helps her to make them into perfect beautiful circles.)
 Roll them out nice and thin...

 Then transfer them to a hot skillet. I used my cast iron. Now listen carefully... you only want to leave them on for a short time. Annie suggests 10-20 seconds on each side. Make sure to not leave them on any longer or else they will get hard.


What you get next is pure magic. Homemade tortillas are amazing! They are like eating soft, warm, clouds of goodness. I really have no idea why I have never attempted them before. They were not hard or expensive.
Here is a finished product of our dinner. YUM. That tortilla is seconds away from being mauwed...
Speaking of being mauwed... Lucy loved her mini quesadilla with spinach and cheese too...

Here is a close up. Notice the red sauce on top. That is a homemade chipotle cream sauce Cole and I made to go along with the meal. It was good but needs a little tweaking. The pork and tortillas really stole the show tonight. Read on to see us make our Chipotle sauce.

I am a sucker for anything labeled chipotle at restaurants and have decided that I could make my own killer chipotle sauce. A while ago we bought a big bag of dried chipotle peppers. I took about five of them and tore off the stems and took out the seeds. Then I put them in the oven at 400 degrees for about five minutes. Just long enough so you can smell them and long enough to not burn them.
Then I put them in warm water to reconstitute the peppers.

Then I put them into the blender with about a cup of greek yogurt, a splash of honey, lemon juice and a little salt.

Here is Cole with a mouthful of some really good tacos. We are quite the team when it comes to cooking. It is somting we both like to do, and we do pretty well at it!. Let me know if you have a good recipe for chipotle sauce because I would love to hear about it.

2 comments:

  1. You inspired me to make my own tortillas too...Brent says we are never going back to store bought! :)

    ReplyDelete