Tortillas

I told Lula a while ago that I wanted to learn how to make tortillas from Marta, the lady that comes twice a week to help with house work. Finally, this week worked out and I was able to spend Tuesday morning learning the art of tortilla making, Nicaraguan style. It was lots of fun, and not too hard. At first it was pretty awkward, but Marta said that I learned fast, and Lula (who herself has tried and never succeeded at making tortillas) could not believe how well ours turned out.

 Here is this picture, you get the basic idea of the entire tortilla process. First, for these tortillas anyway, we shredded a bunch of cheese (the soft white cheese they have here) and added Masa Rica, water, and salt. Then it's mixed by hand to the consistency of play-dough, more or less.

After that, you take a ball the size of an egg (a big egg) and splat it in the center of a circle that is cut from a grocery bag (as seen on the left). With one hand you press the dough out towards the edges while the other hand curves around, shaping the edges, all the a fluid circular movement spinning the plastic on the countertop. It sounds much more complicated that it is, really.

Once you have it all pressed out, you carefully flip it onto your hand, pull of the plastic, and put it in the pan. Now that part sounds easy, but it is where I ran into the most problems. They are really easy to break.

Your pan should be really hot and have a little oil, and after 30 seconds or so, you flip the tortilla over. The is another step that I messed up the fist few times. Also easy to break it here.

A picture capturing the moment that I broke a tortilla while flipping it.

 I have no pictures of the last step, which is unfortunate. What you do after the tortilla comes out of the frying pan is put it on the fire! Well, sort of. We used what looked like a circular cookie cooling rack to cook the tortillas over another burner on the stove, so they got nice and toasty.

Marta, the tortilla master

Behind the bowl next to the Masa Rica is our stack of finished tortillas. Delicious!

And afterwards, we got to eat them! Yay!