Tortilla. (Flour Tortillas)

Tortilla

Hot, fresh, slathered, rolled
Sweet butter runs down my arm
I lick it all up.


Flour Tortillas.

I grew up in Arizona and come from a long line of excellent cooks. Some of my earliest memories are of being in the kitchen with my mother while she made homemade tortillas. The entire house would be filled with the aroma...and I, her little helper would be rewarded with either a quesadilla (a cheese crisp--a tortilla filled with cheese, folded in half, and toasted) OR a tortilla fresh off of the comal (the cast iron griddle used to cook the tortillas) and slathered with butter...Ah! Heaven.

A recipe similar to my mother's follows

4 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of salt
6 tablespoons of Oil (Mom now uses olive or canola oil, as lard is BAD for you...)
1 to 1 and 1/4 cups of lukewarm water.


Sift the dry ingredients, add oil and work it into the flour. Stir in a cup of the water and form into a ball; use more water if needed, until bowl is clear of all dough. Let dough sit for about 5 minutes. Knead on a floured board and make balls of dough roughly the size of an egg. Let sit for about 10-15 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each ball with a rolling pin until each is the size of a salad plate.

Put griddle or skillet on stove on medium heat.

Put the rolled out tortilla onto heated griddle/skillet. The dough will go from nearly see through to opaque...about 1-2 minutes, flip the tortilla to the other side, cook another minute. Stack on a clean dish towel or place into a tortilla warmer. Repeat process.

They taste best freshly made. They will keep for a week in a tupperware container or wrap them up in a clean dish towel then put that into a plastic bag--tie the bag.

Can be used for fajitas, sandwich wraps, quesadillas, or any number of things. I love them best heated with a little butter spread on it and then rolled up. :)