After my totally fair and in no way hyperbolic critique of the Walk-A-Taco last month, I expected more people to come to its defense. Apparently I made a pretty good case against the product, as most of the feedback I received was in agreement with my less-than-positive appraisal.

The only thing that seemed to throw people were a few throwaway comments I made disparaging flour tortillas. I’ve made no secret of my Mexican food snobbery and the various excuses I have for expecting you to tolerate it. At the same time; I don’t consider myself some kind of omnipotent expert on the subject. There are limits to my knowledge, and as much as I might like to be, I’m not the Space-Pope of Mexican food.

That would be this guy.

It just happens to be something I was raised with; that I’m both deeply familiar with and constantly learning something new about. If Mexican food can be quantified as a single entity (which is asking a lot) it holds the strongest sense memories for me. Every Mexican dish and technique in my repertoire, simple or complex, in inextricably tied to people, places and events from my life. The smells and tastes often remind me of family and friends; parties held; romances kindled; places visited long ago.
Even the right combination of stray scents from the right restaurant or mercado, caught on a random street in a random American city, will transport me to being three years old in a Juarez market with my parents.

Often just the suggestion of Mexican food, even bad Mexican food, will make my mouth water like nothing else. This isn’t like a “reclaiming my lost childhood” kind of thing either; I’ve always been this way. Sesame Street was on right before lunch when I was a kid.
How could you not NEED tacos after watching this?

It’s easily my favorite culinary framework to operate in, being a perfect combination of challenging and familiar, with enough breath and depth to never be boring. I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I’m cooking you Mexican food, I’m showing off as much as possible.

I also happen to think, and this is merely my opinion, that when ranked against the other three major cuisines (arguably: Chinese, Italian and French. Feel free to disagree) that Mexican cuisine DESTROYS them in terms of sophistication and influence.

But I repeat.

I’ll give all due credit to the Chinese for inventing cooked food, the French for innovating technique and the Italians for showing the world how to treat ingredients- among many other obvious contributions to world cuisine. But remove the tomato, corn, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanuts, chile peppers, avocado, chocolate and vanilla (all of which either originated or were cultivated in Pre-Columbian Mexico) from those cuisines and many of their “classics” become less than awesome.

In terms of sophistication; read about how the Mayans and Aztecs figured out how to process chocolate and vanilla; both of which require precise fermentation and processing in order to transform the raw ingredients into the flavors we recognize. If they were smart enough to figure that out on their own, then they were certainly smart enough to build pyramids without extraterrestrial assistance.

http://twitpic.com/5qa0it

I’ve been cooking a lot of simple Mexican food for myself lately. About four days a week, I make my own tortillas.
Now, I don’t hate flour tortillas. Given the choice I’ll almost always choose corn over flour and I have a lot of difficulty accepting flour tortillas for items like tacos and enchiladas, but sometimes you want/need a burrito and flour is the only thing that will do.

Part of my snobbery stems from my upbringing, but it was working at the Restaurant of the Peninsular States Just Below California where I became spoiled on flour tortillas fresh off the comal. Corn tortillas have a fairly lengthy shelf life if stored properly. Flour tortillas begin to taste bad the moment they begin to cool down. Factory-made flour tortillas are particularly bad this way, as the heavy amount of shortening they use to keep the tortillas moist takes on an unappealing sour taste in no time.
Most burrito joints will warm these factory-mades on a flattop of some sort, but anyone who’s eaten a leftover burrito that they had in the fridge for a night knows that the tortilla is gonna be the worst part.

So I’ll eat flour tortillas; but I’m picky about when I do.

Making them at home is no picnic. You can buy flour tortilla mixes like White Wings at most large grocery stores (requiring only that you add water). They’re a staple in lots of homes and they make for a great product. The problem is that even the instant mixes require a lot of kneading and rolling out by hand, and failure to use a roller properly can result in tortillas that belong in the pita bread family. If you have the time and the energy; fresh flour tortillas are totally worth the effort and can elevate a meal quite a bit.

The other potential downside to flour tortillas is the lack of options for leftovers. Even homemade ones start to taste funky after a couple of days. They don’t make very good chips, or fry well for soups, so I find the best option is to make pizzas out of them.

Nothing is this world, however, can touch the fresh, soft corn tortilla.

First off; the smell of fresh masa is amazing. Whether in comes from a mix at the grocery store or it’s being ground fresh in a Mexican marketplace; it’s easily one of my favorite smells. Getting up early in the morning and making a stack of corn tortillas to last through the day improves the quality of every day I do it. They can be a lot of work for one person (like a lot of Mexican food, tortillas are a lot more fun when made in an assembly line of family or friends), but once you get the technique down, it’s no more difficult than baking bread.

Masa mix can be purchased at nearly any large grocery store, but Mexican mercados might carry fresh ground masa or other specialties like blue corn masa. I use a cast iron pan to cook mine on; and I recommend you do the same.

Because I make a lot of tortillas at home, buying a tortilla press made sense a long time ago. My wife and I went through two Mexican-made cast aluminum presses before we realized that our tortilla making was too heavy duty for these common grocery store models.

While shopping in an Indian grocery store, we stumbled on a cast iron chapati press (size 4) that seemed perfectly suited to our needs. We’ve had the same one for more than five years and it’s been nothing but reliable. The one in the picture above isn’t ours.
Ours came with a swastika on it for some reason.

I’ve posted plenty of taco-related recipes on here before, but when you’ve finished with tacos and still have plenty of leftover corn tortillas you have a whole world of other options for them.

• You can fry them whole for tostadas or roll them up with cheese for flautas (or taquitos, if you will).
• You can fry large strips or triangle for your own homemade tortilla chips (always better than from a bag) or for chilaquiles.

My personal favorite is migas (featured at the very top of the page). A simple combination of day-old corn tortillas torn roughly and sauteed in oil until crispy with onions and peppers, then scrambled up with eggs. Migas are a little more Tex-Mex, especially with the addition of cheese, salsa and sour cream, which even I can’t resist some times.

There are no hard and fast rules for how to make them, but the basic ratio is two 6″ tortillas to every one egg, and the order into the pan goes as follows:
Tortillas; onions; chiles; eggs; cheese; cilantro; etc…

Of course the greatest thing anyone can do with a tortilla chip; the one thing all little pieces of corn dream of being a part of someday; is the nacho.

But I think y’all already know how I feel about nachos.