I made the flour tortillas, yesterday. Not particularly tasty. One of the problems is that the recipe used baking soda. I'm not a huge fan of baking soda. It often overpowers the other flavors, especially in a simple recipe with so few ingredients. If I can taste it, there's too much for my taste. Dumped the recipe and another that used baking soda. (I had four recipes in all.) Now, I have only two to try, neither of which uses baking soda.
Why, you may ask, do I want to learn to make my own?
Have you read the ingredient list on a package of flour tortillas?
That's why.
I don't want soy or words I can't pronounce or understand without a scientific dictionary.
Additional problem: I can't bear the thought of using lard or even shortening. I don't keep either in the house. It's olive oil, coconut oil, or butter.
No, I don't "fry" food. Ever.
When a recipe calls for even 1/4" of oil in the pan, I'm not making it.
A skiff is about my limit.
I occasionally order fried food out, like once ever other year or two, after which I'm reminded rather unpleasantly why I don't eat fried foods. If I fry something in a pan, like when I make my hamburger, I add maybe a teaspoon of coconut oil/butter for one reason only: Nonstick pans are not meant to be hot with nothing in them. So, I give my pan something to do while it heats. The oil does make it a little easier to clean the pan afterward as well. Not to mention the fact I toast the hamburger bun while the pan is heating.
When I saute mushrooms or zucchini or make easy-over eggs, again, I use a minimal amount of fat, enough to keep the pan nice. I've noticed on other nonstick pans that if I don't use fat or other liquid in the pan, it doesn't last as long.
Then again, I don't cook anything much higher than medium or a little bit higher.
Today's bit of cooking is done. Don't know if anyone else learned anything, but it's helpful for me to sort it all out.
Speaking of which, I wrote out a schedule right before going to bed. I spent a good portion of the day working on Chapter 7, again. However, I've figured out why I'm struggling with it: I'm using all the new things I've learned to make it better. Finding exactly the right word is like wrestling with an octopus.
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Anne Baldwin married Samuel Chase in 1762. Thought she bore six children, two sons and four daughters, she didn't live long enough to se...
Hi Judy,
ReplyDeleteI have a suspicion that baking soda neutralises flavours. In my early twenties, a group of my friends organised a barbecue in the country. In Spain is traditional to have a sauce called alioli with barbecued lamb and chicken. It is made by pounding garlic (lots of it) in a pestle and mortar and then adding olive oil one drop at a time. The friend who was making it couldn't work out why this sauce wasn't tasting of anything and it had a slightly grey colour (a bit like mustard). When we "investigated", we found that someone had confused the salt packet with the baking soda one (they're both distributed by the same company so the bottles look the same) :P
I think commercial tortillas -like a lot of food products- have all those ingredients added so that they have a longer shelf life, which might suit the producer; us, not so much. I like M.Pollan's policy of "never eating anything his grandmother would not have recognised as food" ;)
Thanks for sharing, Kara. I love little bits of odd information, like the salt and soda in Spain. It could never be mistaken here. One usually comes in a little square box and the other in a round box, made by different companies.
DeleteI know baking soda is used for "lift." Finding it in a tortilla recipe, I admit, confused me. Why would you need rising capabilities in a tortilla recipe? A lot of biscuit and pancake recipes use a great deal of baking soda, and I don't like them either...
Oh.
This is one of the reasons I started experimenting with recipes: Searching for recipes for biscuits I like. I'd forgotten about that. It was a quest I started when I was in my teens.
I like M.Pollan's policy! There are still a lot of processed foods I eat because it's simply easier, but I'm trying to lean more toward recognizable. :-)
I think it's great you are making your own stuff. I'm working on creating more and more things from scratch. I'm finding that sometimes, it's easier and tastes SO much better when I just make things myself.
DeleteStick with it and let us know if you find a good tortilla recipe!
Being allergic to bran and pepper, I have to make a lot of things from scratch. I think I'm going to toss this last batch of tortillas. I made a simple cheese crisp, and it was edible but that's about it. :-)
DeleteI will, Jessie!