Tortillas, Guacamole, and Reflections on Family Food History
This dinner is completed with fried chicken from our local supermarket and refried black beans.
By Cassandra Clifford
To wrap up our recipe Monday series with the conclusion of season 6 of Immigrantly, I thought that I would share two very simple recipes from my mom which very much remind me of my childhood and remind her of hers. For me, I remember spending rainy or snowy days at home, making tortillas from scratch with my mom or going to a party with a big bowl of guacamole and just barely dipping the edge of a tortilla chip in the guacamole because it was too spicy for me.
For my mother, tortillas and beans are her bread and butter. Both of them are peasant food in Mexico, but she isn’t shy about or ashamed of eating them, now or ever. In fact, there are plenty of days when all she wants to eat is a plate of tortillas and beans. I know there are many people who shy away from telling stories about their humbler beginnings or less-than-glamorous pasts, but my mother is proud of her story: it’s made her into the person she is today.
My mom often says that I’m better at cooking than she is, to which I usually respond that my secret is patience and love. (For some things she taught me how to cook, I will admit, I sometimes like my own cooking better, but I can say that she’s objectively far better at making tortillas than I am.) While there are some people who are naturally bad at cooking (I’m thinking about my father, specifically, who, at fifty-five years old, has just mastered making store-bought ravioli and still burns hamburgers whenever he’s trusted to put them on the grill), I’m still a firm believer in the familiar line from Ratatouille: “Anyone can cook!” Perhaps you won’t be making your grandma’s masterwork as your first foray into cooking, but you can start with something simple and small.
I hope what you can take away from this series of family recipes is that anything and everything is a part of history. Some people don’t have the ability to put their stories into words or images and instead, they have food and recipes, a source of life and a connection to the past. I study history, so I know too often that history tends to focus on the stories which have been written down and preserved, but the oral histories and family recipes are just as important. Those histories remind us, maybe more vividly and personally than accounts which have been written down, or where we come from, what has changed over space and time, and what remains the same.
Tortillas
Makes 5-6 servings
Ingredients
3 cups Maseca corn flour
2 ⅓ cups water, room temperature
Directions
Heat a comal, a cast-iron pan, or a skillet over medium-high heat.
Combine the maseca and water in a large bowl with your hands until the mixture has a consistency which is highly moldable, but not dry or crumbly (if it is too sticky, put in a bit more corn flour.
Form the dough into balls about the size of a golf ball (or slightly larger or smaller based on your personal preference).
Use a tortilla press or a heavy pot or baking dish to press the dough between two pieces of parchment paper.
Be careful not to press them too thin, or you will not be able to pull them off of the parchment paper without tearing them. If you prefer a thicker tortilla, you may want to lower the heat slightly to cook it completely without overcooking or burning it on the outside.
Lay the dough flat on the comal or skillet.
When the dough begins to rise on the edges, flip the tortilla.
The dough will begin to rise when the tortilla is cooked. You can flip again and cook the tortilla to your liking.
To store the tortillas, place them in a plastic bag and keep them in the refrigerator until you are ready to reheat them.
Guacamole
Makes ~3 cups (6 servings)
Ingredients
3 avocados
4 jalapeño peppers (remove all/some ribs and seeds for a less spicy guacamole, keep the ribs and seeds if you’re brave)
1 tbsp cilantro leaves
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp minced onion
1 lime
Salt to taste
Directions
Combine the jalapeños, cilantro, garlic, and onion in a food processor or blender.
Mash the avocados in a bowl.
Add the salsa and the juice of one lime to the avocado and combine well.
Salt the guacamole to taste. Be sure to keep the avocado pit in the guacamole (even after you store it).
As soon as you are done eating the guacamole, put it in the fridge in a container or covered in plastic wrap with the pit still inside and your guacamole can stay fresh for up to three days.
A pro tip: if your guacamole is a day or two old and slightly browned and you have an extra avocado, mash your avocado with your guacamole. It will mask the bitterness of guacamole which has gone slightly brown.