Author Archives: mamster

Killa tortilla

I think I’ve come up with a new way to kill a conversation. I’ll wait until someone mentions flour tortillas, and then I will say, “You know, I make my own flour tortillas.”

“Wait, wait!” I will say. “It’s not like beating your clothes on rocks! Besides, I’ll bet you’re in on that needlepoint craze.”

Seriously, making flour tortillas is easy, and they’re a jillion times better than Diane’s, though recognizably the same kind of thing. Last week we made quesadillas with the homemade tortillas, roasted poblanos, seared onions, and cilantro. I recommend you do the same.

**FLOUR TORTILLAS**
Makes 8
Adapted from Fine Cooking, July 2006

9 ounces all-purpose flour, plus a bunch more for flouring surfaces
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup (a little over 1-1/2 ounces) cold lard
2/3 cup warm water

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the lard and cut in with a pastry blender or your fingers until you reach oatmeal consistency. Stir in the water until the dough comes together.

2. Turn out onto a floured board and knead a couple of minutes, until it’s smooth.

3. Using a scale, portion the dough into eight 2-ounce balls. Cover the balls with plastic wrap and rest at least 30 minutes or up to 2 hours.

4. Heat a 10- or 12-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Roll one ball out into a very thin 9-inch circle, reflouring as necessary. Place the proto-tortilla in the skillet and cook until it bubbles up and browns in parts on the bottom, about one minute. Pop any large bubbles with a fork and flip the tortilla. Continue cooking until browned in spots on the other side, about one minute. Remove to a plate and repeat with the remaining dough balls.

Note: These freeze well, though I’m not sure for how long, since I’ve only actually tried freezing them for two days. Reheat in the microwave or a skillet.

Bathtime antics

Tonight at bathtime…

> **Iris** (while I was flicking suds at her): You throwin’ mashed potatoes at me?

Later, she picked up some suds in her little red barrel. “That’s a creamy head!” Then she made what sounded like her usual fake-snoring noise.

“Are you snoring?” I asked.

“No, I’m drinking the beer.” She nudged her plastic fish toward the barrel. “That’s some fishy snack. Fish is eating some oatmeal.”

“Is it Irish oatmeal?” I asked.

“No, it’s fish oatmeal.”

One last hack

Naturally I left off my favorite hack in that pizza hacks post.

How do you get your pizza from the peel onto the stone? Most people answer: Coat the peel liberally with flour, semolina, or cornmeal, give it a jerk, and pray. But there’s a much easier way. Put a piece of parchment paper on the peel, or, if you don’t have a peel or (as in my case) there isn’t room in your kitchen to use one, use a cookie sheet. Fling or stretch your dough (or roll it, I won’t tell) and place it right on the parchment. Top it, and use scissors to trim the parchment roughly around the edge. Then slide the pizza and parchment onto the stone.

The pizza will brown just as well, and this method cuts down 95 percent on the agonized wails of cheese burning on the oven floor.

Reynolds parchment, sold in many supermarkets, is fine, but if you use a lot of parchment, it’s worth buying a 100-pack of flat sheets from [King Arthur](http://www.kingarthurflour.com). (And if you *really* use a lot of parchment, it’s cheaper still to buy it from a restaurant supply store, but they typically sell full-sheet parchment in 500- or 1000-sheet packs.)

R&G after hours

I realize it’s the height of narcissistic blog behavior to post about a dream you had, so I’ll make this a best-of, and I’ll keep them short.

I don’t remember my dreams very often, and when I do, they’re usually scary or dull. Every once in a while, though, I’ll wake up giggling and annoy Laurie because I’ve had a dream that seemed very serious at the time but was actually comic gold. Here are four of those, all at least vaguely food-related. I promise two things: (a) these are all actual, unembellished dreams, and (b) I won’t share any more dreams until I have several more of this quality, which should be around 2026.

* This afternoon, still trying to throw off my cold, I took a big nap and had a dream in which I was working as a consultant to the military of some Latin American country. I advised my men that if they wanted to be taken seriously as an army, they had to go around and fight the armies of neighboring countries. But that was too expensive, so instead we would go to the supermarket and fight people in the various sections of the market devoted to the foods of neighboring countries. We went to the supermarket and found a guy picking grapes. “GET HIM!” I shouted to my army guys. “That’s just a guy picking grapes,” said one guy. “But we’re in the Argentina section,” I said. “The army of Argentina is basically a guy picking grapes anyway. NOW GET HIM!” So my army guys started halfheartedly throwing punches at this supermarket employee.

* I was given an assignment by my editor to interview Noam Chomsky. “We know all about Noam Chomsky the linguist and the political writer,” she said. “But we never hear about Noam Chomsky the food writer.” So I met with Chomsky, and he said, “I wrote a rap about cheese. Do you want to hear it?” Absolutely, I said. Chomsky rapped, “I’m better than cheddar / I’m ruder than Gouda / I got more cheeses than a cheese computer.”

* I had entered myself in an MTV amateur rap competition, which was being held in a mobile home. As it got closer to my number, I was getting more and more nervous, because I hadn’t prepared anything and my rapping skills were subpar. Finally I was up, and I burst out onto the stage and dropped the following rhyme: “Them other guys be buggin’ / Girls come from far and wide to bring me muffins.”

* I was in a musical set in a McDonald’s in Nazi Germany. The title of the musical was _I’m Eating My McNuggets in the Land of McBigots_.

Smokehouse blues

Parents, don’t give your kids the good stuff. Stick to junk food. Otherwise, this could happen to you.

Last night I was rereading a great little essay by Lucian K. Truscott IV about pancakes. It appears in Best Food Writing 2003. Basically the piece is just about Truscott making pancakes for his daughter and son, but it has many charming bits, such as the fact that he calls his son Five.

I resolved that I would make pancakes for Iris this morning. I woke up with a 101 fever and generally feeling like a pancake myself. But dammit, we were going to have pancakes even if I had to order them from the hospital cafeteria. Iris woke up at 7:30, and I went in and said, “Hey, Iris, how would you like some pancakes this morning? And some bacon?”

“Nueske’s,” said Iris.

“We don’t have any Nueske’s today, just Farmland.”

I tried to change the subject by telling Iris I was feeling sick but that I’d taken some medicine. “So you’re all better now,” she said.

So I made the pancakes and a few strips of bacon. Inevitably, Iris ate a whole pancake, but she took a couple bites of bacon and said, “Dada, this bacon doesn’t taste good.”

Maybe I could teach her to recognize a dozen types of bacon by taste, and she could be the spokeskid for the Bacon of the Month Club.