Hi! I'm Kam.
Nice to meet you.
I started this food blog for people like me; you need to feed the hungry people in your life, but you're on a shoestring budget.
Let me put it this way; I live with my fiancé, his parents, and their two kids, one in their teens, another in grade school. My fiancé and I are currently the only ones working for reasons beyond my control (and believe me, if I could control them, I wouldn't have started this blog), so for right now we're stretching all our money about as far as it can go. We do well, but honestly, I think we could do better.
So this blog is here not only for your information, but mine. We'll all be learning at the same time. Pretty cool huh?
One of my first ideas has been for when we're short on bread in the house, which happens a lot when you have a picky grade schooler, and a picky fiancé in the house (he won't eat anything but white bread sometimes. I could get the super-awesome whole-grain bread and serve him is favorite sandwich, and he'll look at me and go "this isn't wonderbread". Sigh)
I make tortillas. Mmyep. Big, thick, chewy tortillas. The great thing about the tortilla recipe I use is it's easily doubled, tripled, quadrupled. You can make one tortilla (if you're the type who has the patience to make just one), or 50.
This recipe makes 4, since I usually don't need more than that (I typically use them for our work lunchboxes, and sometimes end up using the cough as a white bread/pie crust substitute. I throw in the fillings, use my got-them-for-a-dollar dumpling presses to seal them, and throw them in some oil to fry, or in a dry pan to cook the outside 'til crispy.
This is about what they end up looking like. Except not Pirogies.
This is a one bowl/ dump everything in recipe , but unlike many recipes out there for quick tortillas, I treat this like a pie crust. Dry ingredients first, then fat, then liquid. You need...
-1 cup flour, (cheap all-purpose flour does just fine.)
-1/4 cup shortening, cold bacon drippings, or margarine (Shortening is most common, bacon drippings I have used with wonderful results. Plus, when you make bacon, you now have a use for all those drippings instead of going in the garbage or down the drain! Margarine is a last resort, but it gives the tortillas a mild buttery flavor which goes well with anything non-mexican.)
-1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp water.
-1/2 tsp seasoning salt (really! You can use regular salt, but seasoning salt makes the tortilla dough 'pop'.)
-Stick your cup of flour into the bowl, and add a shake of seasoning salt into it. Mix well with a fork. You don't want salty pockets, do you?
- Add in your fat. Cut it in with two knives, or if you're more privileged than me, a pastry blender. Keep goin' at it until you have pea sized bits in there. Maybe a bit smaller. I don't care. You just want it mixed.
-Throw in your water and take a spoon or a spatula, or your hands and mix until you get a wad of dough similar to play-doh. It'll probably be kind of sticky, do you yourself a favor and flour your hands. You're gonna need to add more flour anyway, might as well get dirty early, right?
- Dust your kneading surface with some flour and start molesting that dough. Poke it, knead it, roll it, make sure the entire dough ball, inside and out, ends up slightly less sticky than a 5 year old. Y'know, you feel the stick, but it's not enough to adhere to your hands or bother you THAT much? You don't want to overwork it or overflour it, you'll end up with impossible to work with dough that will flake apart while you work on it. Think refrigerator pie dough once you let it set on the counter. Anyway, long explanation. Next step, please.
- Divide the tortilla dough into four equal balls, if you're making regulation tortillas. If not, and you're making dumpings, pocket sandwiches, or anything else that needs a cookie-cutter style take on this recipe- Skip this step.
-Let your dough rest for a few minutes. Get your other cooking going, have a glass of tea, go bother your fiancé. Maybe wash that bowl you were using earlier. Save yourself from toiling over dried dough in a bowl later.
-Roll our your dough. I usually roll mine out to about 1/4", but if you're wanting store-tortilla thin dough... well, good luck. I couldn't ever get mine that thin, but then again I don't have the patience for it. Get it flat and to a thickness of your liking. If you didn't let it rest, it'll shrink back and be a big'ol pain in your rear.
-Cut out your shapes, if you are taking the 'pocket sandwich' route. You'll fill them, and then seal them before you cook 'em. Make sure there aren't any holes in them, or you'll have filling leakage in your chosen cooking device. If you have dough where you can't fit your cutter, re-roll it and make more until you have a blob of dough it just doesn't fit on. Remainders can be cut into little squares, deep fried, and given a sprinkling of cinnamon-sugar for a ridiculously unhealthy snack!
- Cook your tortilla or tortilla-ish food item! Some pan fry in a dry pan, which is a classic way to cook your tortillas. If they're thin, cooking one side will do nicely, if they're not thin, you'll need to flip them. Little brown pockets or dots are a good thing, just like the ones in the package. If you fry them, panfrying in oil should be done in a lighter oil, because these suckers pick up a LOT of oil. These keep well in the refrigerator, or eaten fresh out of the pan. Let them cool a bit first, or you'll end up with a burnt mouth.
Quick, easy, to the point. And you can boast you made them yourself!
