Corn Tortillas with Smoked Bacon

Last night I made my best ever batch of corn tortillas. I have a great love of Mexican food, and I’ve been making tortillas from wheat flour and corn (maize) flour for some years. Thanks to the most excellent book “Tacos” by Mark Miller (also full of fantastic recipes for fillings) I now understand corn tortillas a lot better. Of course, I’ve never seen a Mexican cook make them, so I’m still an outsider to the secrets. But here’s what I’ve learned.

Ingredients

2 cups maize flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups plus 2 tbsp warm water

Mix salt and flour together. Add water and mix thoroughly with your hands. The dough should be slight moist at the end as the flour will continue to absorb the moisture. Last night I wet my hands with water after ‘id mixed the dough to make sure that it was a bit damp.

Cover dough with plastic wrap for 30-60 mins.

Cut dough in half and then quarters and make 16 balls. Cover them until you need them. Roll them out or use a tortilla press like I do.

Cook on a hot pan (I use my cast iron frypan) for about 90 seconds on one side (until starting to blacken) and then 30 seconds on the other side. There’s some trial and error in learning how to get this right for your particular pan and stove.

Place cooked tortillas in a folded damp tea towel until needed.

I usually put out several bowls of different fillings for people to choose what they want, but this time I cooked one batch – garlic oil, red onion, smoked bacon, smoked chicken, squash + eggplant + cherry tomatoes from our garden, beans, diced poblano chillies (canned – you can’t get them fresh here), basil, some water and a bit of bottled poblano chilli sauce.

Served with grated cheese and fresh lettuce (we were out of sour cream and avocado). Really excellent. Now that I have the tortillas worked out, I’m going to work my way through Miller’s book of fillings!