Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Paul,

Mexican tortillas or Spanish tortillas?

They're both easy. If they're not, you have a bad recipe.

Mexican, corn. "Easy" is one of those things.... it takes a very fine balance of masa/water to get just the right level that doesn't stick to the plastic, but still puffs some. And the cooking takes just the right level of heat. All very simple, but takes some experience to get right, so I'm running some trials. The last ones were fairly decent, but I can definitely do better. I've made flour ones too, they seemed quite a bit easier to get right or maybe I just worked with such doughs more often.

My grandmother used to make potato gnocchi sat the speed of light. A restaurant, 5 kids and 15 grandkids makes for a whole lot of practice.

Mary

I've had great success with the Potato Gnocchi recipe from Julee Rosso's "Great Good Food" 1993 Cookbook.

Paul,

The water balance shouldn't be that fussy. I've found that the quality of the masa makes a considerable difference in how easy it is to get tortilla dough to work. Particularly, supermarket masa brands are often bleached and/or dried out and old, and those are sticky and tend to break. Not sure where you can get high-quality masa in Ottawa, though.

Also, I'll post Roberto Santabanez's instructions after I get home. Following them, I was able to make a huge stack of good tortillas on the first try.

Thanks! Though I already get decent (maybe good, and much better then supermarket) ones, I'm looking for great I should have said masa harina, not actual masa. Lately i've been using bob's red mill, which we can get locally. But more recipes really helps understand the variances, and approaches.

Hmm, that reads kinda wrong, sounds like a put-down of yours, which it was not. I want to learn to make them really well; fast, efficient and above all, with great texture and taste. I've done them a few times, and the last ones were OK. I'm overly harsh; i was not going to eat them, my wife tried them and said they were great, so we had them. I'd like to have making them to default, not a special case. Gnocchi I'm not so sure, we don't eat gnocchi a lot, but we have lots of meals with tortillas. I find re-heating the commercial flour ones on a grill pan makes them orders of magnitude better, but still not as good as home-made.

Paul, next time you come my way let me know and I'll send you a couple of places that /make sell them commercially that are quite good. Or come to mine and my mom and you can make gnocchi while I hang out with wife and baby.

I've been buying the Ontario Ravioli brand lately since have not had time to make them. I do want to try the ricotta ones.

Paul,

I think you're more of a perfectionist than I am about tortillas. For me, if they don't fall apart when I make a taco, they're good.

Well, I get these obsessions....