And on the seventh day of Grandma Vi's Festival of Feasts, Auntie Maria made tortillas. I would like to say it was inspiring to watch her make tortillas and that I learned so much, but the truth is I saw only that I have about one thousand hours of practice ahead of me. In a choice between practicing for Carnegie Hall and practicing for a beautiful tortilla, I will most likely choose the tortilla. Like all insanely skilled people, Maria made it look so easy, seriously deceptively easy. Her directions were literally this:
Put some flour in a bowl.
Add some lard
Put a small palm full of baking soda
And a little salt
Combine
Ummmm....how much, exactly? To which she said, "Oh you know, you can just tell. If you need flour, add flour. Fat, add fat." So off we went. She made this stack of 25 tortillas in 15 minutes. Start, to finish. And did you know tortillas have a top and a bottom? All my life, I never knew that. Good luck. I know I'll need it.
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Seriously. I am still trying to perfect my homemade tortillas. I have read every article and watched every video and I still cant get them to puff perfectly. And, there are more than a few jokes about my home made papusas around the house. I try and try and they are getting damn yummy, but they cant beat the queso papusas at El Zocolo on upper Mission in SF. Once a month or so I take Anna and the kids there, and we enviously watch them make our meal. We tell them we are practicimg diligently at home. We ask them for tips and tell them we will stop coming when my home cooked papusas are as good as theirs. Now, every time we are walking out the door, they say, "see you in a few weeks!" We all laugh. xo
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