Time for Tortillas

  After publishing the blog yesterday and having had a good meal of fish tacos, we realized that we were out of tortillas. We have enough of the taco mix left but nothing to put them in, so it is time to make some tortillas.
  Tortillas are a unleavened bread that are fried in a dry pan. If you make these inside, be prepared to open a few windows as the flour that you roll them out on tends to burn after a while. Our barbeque burner doesn't seem to go to a low enough heat to cook them with out burning, so putting up with the smoke is our only option at this point.

Cornmeal Tortillas

3/4 cup cornmeal

1 1/4 cup flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp shortening or butter

1 cup boiling water

In a bowl, combine cornmeal, flour and salt. Mix together then add boiling water. Stir with a fork to mix well. Allow the mixture to cool, this allows the cornmeal to soften a bit.  

Divide the dough into about 10 pieces the size of a golf ball.  Roll each ball out thinly on a floured surface.

Your skillet should be preheated to a medium low temperature. You want the tortillas to cook and slightly brown without burning. 

Place the rolled dough in the hot skillet and leave flat until bubbles start to appear on the surface, turn the tortilla and cook the other side. The bubbles will be the only part to brown, once they have browned turn the tortilla, if they cook too long they will dry out and be tortilla chips.

Keep a damp cloth handy to cover the cooked tortillas, they seem to dry out very quickly. 

For us, this works best as a 2 person process. My wife makes the dough and rolls it out, and in typical guy fashion, I get to heat the things up and call it cooking.

We made these just before lunch and used the warm tortillas right out of the pan to make fish tacos with our leftovers from yesterday. The leftover tortillas freeze really well, so we made a double batch to be ready for next time. Learning to cook has been one of the fun benefits of being retired, it is great to have two people in the kitchen working together to create a fantastic lunch that we both can enjoy. Hope you enjoy these as well.