A Better Tortilla Formula

    

The trick is to use boiling water, and to smash them as you are frying them.  Here's the recipe-

400 grams all purpose flour
1 cup boiling water
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put all the dry ingredients and the oil in the bowl of your bread machine and turn it on. Slowly dribble the water in as the beaters agitate the flour. Let the knead cycle finish, and you're ready to go.

Roll out the tortillas as seen in the video toward the end of this post. The process is exactly the same, just bigger. You should get 10-12, 11" tortillas. If you make them little, you'll get as many as 15.

Heat a heavy skillet to medium-high. Make sure it is completely dry, or the tortillas will stick.

Have a clean, damp towel ready to wrap the finished tortillas in.

When the skillet is hot, lay a tortilla in the pan. It should turn translucent in about 5 seconds, when you turn it over. Use a silicone spatula to quickly but gently smash the whole tortilla against the pan for about another 7 or 8 seconds, then scoop it out and put it under the damp towel. Repeat until you've cooked all the tortillas. 

 Here are a few more technical pointers:
1. Use enough flour when you roll them out, or they will stick to everything.

2. Roll all the tortillas before you start cooking them. They really do only take about 15 seconds in the pan.

3. I have one of those large, super flexible pancake spatulas to do the smashing with. The smashing is important, it prevents the tortilla from developing giant bubbles which make them cook unevenly.

4. You will need a bigger frying pan than mine, like a 14" one. I'm going to be looking for one at goodwill.

5. As you can see from the pictures, one side of the tortilla has more freckles. That's because when you first put them in the pan, you basically just show it to the heat before flipping it over. That way you don't overcook it by accident.

6. You could put the hot tortillas in  tupperware or a ziploc bag, but I find that a towel allows them to stay moist as they cool without developing slimy spots. Once they cool off you can put them in something airtight.

What makes this a better recipe? The boiling water. I find that if I use cold water, the dough is springier, and harder to roll out. That makes it harder to make a very thin tortilla. If they're too thick, they take longer to cook, which makes them dry out of you use a lower heat, or burn if you use higher heat.. If you don't cook them long enough, they just taste like raw dough. In either case the texture is a little stiff and papery.

On the other hand, using boiling water partially cooks the flour to begin with, which alters the elasticity of the dough. This recipe makes a very durable, forgiving dough that is easy to roll out, but difficult to accidentally poke holes in. They cook up tender but not gummy, delicately chewy, and substantial enough to make a good burrito even when they are very thin.
So, what's in the bowl? Tortilla soup of course. This is a 'cheating' recipe, because it uses a can of Trader Joe's Cuban Style black beans as a main ingredient.

David helped me make it. My instructions to him over the phone at about 3 o'clock were something like

"Get the big cooking pot with the silver handle sticking off it. Fill it half way with water. Put it on the big back burner on high. Put 3 frozen chicken pieces in it, 4 if they're small. Chop up an onion and put that in. Open the can of chilis in adobo and put 3 chilis in the pot. When it boils, turn it down to 5 and ignore it until I get home."

When I got home at 7, I added a bunch of cumin, garlic powder, a blob of tomato paste, a dash of salt and the aforementioned can of beans, cranked the heat back up to a boil, and waited until the soup had reduced enough that it looked tasty. It was, very. You tear up chunks of the fresh tortillas and put them in your soup and they get all dumpling-y. You can add fresh tomatoes and cilantro, but I was out of those things the day I took the picture, and it was still very good.

Home made Gnocchi

3/4 cup flour
1 medium sized russet potato
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon minced fresh herbs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Poke a few holes in the potato, then microwave it for about 5 minutes, or until it's quite soft. While the potato is still hot, break it open and scoop the insides out. Let the  potato cool enough to handle, then press it through a wire sieve. Toss the potato crumbs with the rest of the ingredients, then gently knead everything together. You don't need to work it very much, just until the dough comes together into a reasonably smooth ball. Squeeze or roll the dough out into a rope about 1/2 inch thick and twist off little balls. Set the balls aside until you have a large pot of salted water boiling. Dump in the gnocchi and wait for the water to return to boiling. Reduce the heat to a medium simmer, then wait until the gnocchi flip themselves over and they feel slightly bouncy against a spoon, about 3-5 minutes. Drain and serve immediately with your favorite sauce, they are nowhere near as good the next day.

Some thoughts:

1. Pressing the potato through the sieve is really pretty brilliant. What happens is that the cooked potato cells get separated into uniformly small particles without the starches inside them being turned into a heavy glob of paste, which in turn allows the potato to combine very evenly with the dry ingredients. The recipe I read suggested it and I thought well, I might as well give it a shot. Good call.

2. Add more herbs and maybe a little more salt? Depends on how you like them, and what you're serving them with. You can serve them in broth, like mini matzo balls, in which case go lighter on the seasonings. If you're doing a sauce with more flavor, you might want to punch them up a bit or they will get lost.

3. Gnocchi are dumplings, so think about what texture you like your dumplings to have. Lighter, fluffier? This recipe will do it. Firmer, chewier? Leave out the baking powder and chill them slightly before cooking.

4. In any case, don't over-boil them. Gooshy is not the same thing as tender.

5. Traditionally, you're supposed to roll each gnocchi under the tines of a fork to create ridges for the sauce to stick in. Pain in the ass. By twisting off the dough bits, the twisted surfaces of each one will remain slightly shaggy, which amounts to the same thing with less fuss.

6. Don't be tempted to make them much bigger. If you make them too big, you will have to cook them until the outsides fall apart before the centers are done. The potato dough has subtle and delicious qualities, but the drawback is that it does not have as much structural integrity as an all-flour dumpling, or one with egg as a binder.

7. What's that business about 'flip themselves over' mean? Well, as they cook, starches expand and become less dense, also, steam accumulates inside the part of the dumpling that is underwater. Eventually, enough of the dough will be affected by the heat to reverse the buoyancy of the dumpling mass, and the lighter, i.e. more cooked, part of the dough will roll upwards to the surface. Neato!

Cheap Grub

 

 
Last year or so I was talking about how most green leafy vegetables come in strangely large units. Cabbage, napa, collards, that stuff. Kale seems to be the exception to the rule, at least lately. I go to Fred Meyer and they're asking a buck-fifty for like, 6 meager leaves. Pfffft! That's maybe a serving? Ridiculous. Back to Trader Joe's. A big bag of kale there is about $2, and it's ready to go in the pot when it gets home. This soup is unremarkable looking, but it's tasty as well as cheap, and you only need one big pot to cook it.

Kale and Sausage Soup with Lentils and Things

1 italian sausage link, mild or hot- about 1/4 lb
1 onion
1 clove garlic
6 or 8 mushrooms
2 tsp broth concentrate
2 T tomato paste
1/4 cup brown, black, or green lentils
water, of course
2 carrots
1/2 bag of kale
salt & pepper

Use a 4 or 5 quart sauce pan with a fairly heavy bottom. Heat about a tablespoon of oil in it, and put in the sausage to brown. Meanwhile, dice the onion & mushrooms. Add the onions and mushrooms to the pot and stir them around. As the onions brown, start cutting little bits off the sausage. This will make the sausage into unevenly sized lumps, from little tiny grains to maybe half-inch chunks. When the sausage is browned, crush in a clove of garlic. Fry the garlic just until it is barely browned then add about 6  cups of water, the tomato paste, broth concentrate, and the lentils. Stir until the tomato paste is dissolved, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer, cover, and leave it alone for about 45 minutes. Peel and chop the carrots, then add them and the kale to the pot. You may need to add a little more water, due to evaporation. Cover the pot again and cook for another 45 minutes or so, until the kale is tender. It takes a long time. Taste for salt and pepper, serve with a dollop of greek yogurt if you feel indulgent.

Notes:

1. Yes, this recipe takes at least a good 2 hours. It's soup. Proper soup often takes a long time to develop flavors.
2. You could just squeeze the guts out of the sausage link instead of dinking around with it in the pan. But I happened to want the extra texture from the bits of sausage casing. Kale is very assertive, it needs plenty of assertive, bumpy, things to go with it.
3. Kale also cooks down quite a lot. Let it wilt into the soup pretty well before adding any additional water during the second half of cooking, or you may get an inaccurate idea of how much water you need to put in.
4. This soup needs a good bit of salt. The long cooking time causes the vegetables to become quite sweet, and the tomato paste adds plenty of sugar also. If you don't salt it, it will be very disappointing.
5. Likewise, do not use sweet italian sausage. It usually has too much fennel, and will not give the peppery kick the soup needs.
6. Brown, green, and black lentils hold their shape well when they're boiled. If you just want to thicken the soup, use red lentils, which dissolve rapidly during cooking. I used green ones, incidentally.

You need some nice crusty rolls with this, I think.