Skip to main content

Unmaking of tortilla with corn flour

I'm on my cooking spree, it has been bread & jam or noodles for too long. Now that I have grown a taste for cheese I bought a lot of cheese and started googling recipes that includes cheese. I started out with cheese sauce for nachos, I liked nachos more than sauce cause I didn't get it right the first time. In nachos I found a good evening snack, so moved into salsa or mayo or even thick salad dressing as I found it easier to arrange than cook.

Inevitably I came back to stove when I wanted to eat pasta after having mouth watering conversations with Dewang. I wanted to make pasta with sauce or cheese of my choice also privilege of eating pasta in India is mostly reserved for those people who works in corporate and goes out for casual dinner and lunch were they don't need to pay bill. Cooking at home gives me the opportunity to introduce such cuisine to my parents.

I started cooking pasta and sauce, once I made the cheese sauce curdy and the other day I forgot to add enuf cheese to mac'n cheese :lol: But we all ate it like it is the best, most possibly we did that becoz we didn't know how the original dish tasted like. I didn't give a shit about Parsley, Basil or Oregano I just over loaded it with mint and garlic and taste was just fine. My sis was so happy with the taste that she asked me to make a dish for my niece birthday! oh wow! I made them Nacho and salsa, I was still working on sauce so skipped to Caesars dressing :D and it worked like magic.

With Nachos came the lost love for Mexican food, and accidentally I bought too much of corn flour. I searched "corn flour mexican recipes" and voila the first result was 'Tortilla' only a day back I heard Fluffy saying "Indian love Naans, its fluffy version of Tortilla, We (Mexican) and them (Indian) have much similarities". Then I zeroed on how I'd going to serve the tortilla, 'as a wrap with cooked quinoa, mushroom & capsicum with cilantro pepita pesto', I immediately wanted to empty the jar of 400g corn flour and make tortilla! Nope, nope with experience on experimenting comes modesty I used 1/3 of what we got and started to make dough for tortilla and started to realize that this dough is not going to be like the dough we make for roti.

Youtube again, I watched like 3 videos to just prepare dough for tortilla I was just doing similar to what they were telling. Always remember in cooking there cannot be a standard proceed minor adjustments are always accepted and sometimes they turn out to be even cooler than original recipe. When I realized things are outta my hand, I called out for the most experienced hand, my mom; she tried sometime and decide to add maida to make the patham* right for making dough. And tortilla as I still called it like that came out in smaller sizes, Largest one was of one jaan^ in diameter.

I over sauteed mushroom and it became small in size, capsicum and quinoa came out just fine. Now for the arrangement I took each tortilla, applied pesto coat and arranged mushroom, capsicum and quinoa and wrapped and presented. The stuffing were too heavy for small tortilla to hold, still it turned out to be just fine. Yes I made taco instead of wrap. Once everything it done I googled again "making tortilla" and I found the corn flour != corn meal != Masa harina!!!!! It is Masa harina that I should have used, even corn meal can be called ingredient,, corn flour is just a fucking thickener for soups or any just liquid dish that you want to be served in semi state! :-/

Later I found in another article telling that Masa harina is also grinned corn but they grinned only after treating corn with lime (treat? what? Critical treatment or only dressing o.O ). Spotted another article telling that if you have only corn flour you can add equal amount of all purpose flour that I'd read as maida to make tortilla! Oh! mommy! you are genius

* Patham - indicated the form on dough. Patham is a Tamil word, it has context meaning and generally denotes the form on object in context. In context of dough it should be easily made into balls without breaking or sticking.

^ Jaan - length between tip of thumb and small finger when they are kept part by stretching.  

Comments

Popular this month

Puththu kovilum Putho tilesum, as they are built

Its the grand Aadi season here in Tamil Nadu wherever you go you'd be followed by awful noise from no mercy speakers masqueraded as a devotional song. Yes, this is the first post dedicated to it. Hindu is not a religion but it's idealism, a way to unite people, that's perfectly constructed by assuming separate task to every God, no single God worship. Hindus moved from nature worship to idol worship, but that doesn't mean that we don't have nature worship we have created an idol for them and continued to worship them in a different form. Snake is a beautiful reptile, I have made friend with few too... Our ancestor found the natural law, 'every living creature on earth is important for the ecosystem to be balanced'. Maybe to make sure snakes are not killed fearing their venom they made them as God too! Not just idol snakes, they are worshipped as they are at their  conquered (from rats and termite)   nest or  puthu . Puthu...

Up and Close with Sudalai Madan: The Encounter

Night of 13th April all the preparations for the rituals were done in the temple, Sudalaimadan swamy was decorated with flowers, fruits and coconuts; the dedications reached above his chest. My cousin Sudalai Muthu, senior priest of the shrine reached home by late-night got blessings of his father Late Shanmugam Sundaram also previous head priest and blessed the family members in room dedicated for God, then started towards the temple. People have already gathered in huge numbers and were waiting for the Sudalaimada Swamy's arrival at Temple. Different rituals were offered by people to the Lord in order to get the blessings. As it is believed Sudaimada Swamy, the son of Lord Siva used to consume meat in Kailash for this reason he is sent to earth, where he can satisfy his earthy hunger thereby not polluting Kailash. Sree Aaladi Padmanabha Sudalaimada Swamy Temple, Kumarapuram Offering meat to Sudalaimadan is the most important and watchful event of the festival. Many devotees off...

Shame of Sabarimala : Annadhanam under TDB

Annadhana Prabhuve, Saranam Ayyappa It means "The noble who donates food, Ayyappa save us". The legend is not clear about how or why Lord Ayyappa is called so, coincidentally the third step of the Pathinetu padi stands for Annapoorna (the God of food) by crossing this step Ayyappamar assure that they have followed Ayyappa by donating food to peers and made sure any Ayyappamar coming to Sabarimala for Punya Dharishanam is not hungry. I'm sure this year many Ayyappamar did not fullfil this deed to proudly step on it, they neither received nor gave; they were curbed. Though it was ABASS*   who started it all many sangam took up the responsibility to feed the hungry Ayyappamar, people have crossed the toughest times by taking supplies to impossible mountain peak like Karimala, Azhutha; now with roads easing pain kerela government and travancore devaswom board(tdb) is pulling the rug on Seva Sangams. Image edited from The Hindu Double standard of kl govt and tbd ...

Acid rain in Chennai

Don't panic it is not literal acid but a metaphorical one. Probably Poes Garden, maybe Gopalapuram I can't imagine any other area in Chennai to be drained. So why is this? every time? we pray for rain and when it comes we are always unprepared, even for moderate showers our roads are flooded. Is it because Chennai is an old city and its infrastructure not enough for information age or is that because of the vote bank politics? By now you'd have guessed what I quoted as 'Acid rain', it is that one created by the broadcasting network. Nowadays every political party is having its own network, you do the math and imagine the amount of 'Angel and Demon' perspective we are exposed to. From every network that is with the ruling party, we are shown the 'Angel face' emergency number, disaster recovery team, ambulance gushing thru flood, evacuation and so on. Other side which clearly outnumbers the ruling party in 4:1 ratio shows us flood, death, dengue, sew...

Wings of Fire

Though tagged under review I’m going to try and bring the essence of the book, in no means I have the guts to write a review on a book that’s written on/by Dr APJ Adbul Kalam. Unlike regular biographies the book is filled with information and facts on Indian Space research straight from Dr Kalam’s diary, has very limited information on his personal life. From Preface of the book, we can understand Mr Arun Tiwari co-author of this book had brought up this idea to write a book and put it work. The book is organized in seven sections but the core content is put inside 4 sections – Orientation, Creation, Propitiation, and Contemplation. While the rest cover how and why this book formed and what it intends to convey. Dr Kalam being a spiritual person has quoted poems and lines from the Quran throughout the book. Orientation starts with the birth of the legend Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam in Rameswaram to Ashiaamma and Jainulabdeen, Dr.Kalam’s father is a humble boat owner a...