Cooking Cheap

How many times do you have to make a recipe before you figure it out? Some people would give up after once or twice and a few others have fat dogs (they eat the failures). It took me a few (8 or so ) tries to get the sourdough french bread figured out, but I’ve never really gotten a handle on the thick masa like sopes or quesadillas. Until Fridays night.

As you may remember I have a love/hate relationship with the Rick Bayless cook books. I love to read them and all the foot notes and trivia but they never turn out for me. The bread experiment also taught me that one has to be careful when deviating from the recipe, particularly when baking and sopes or quesadillas (from corn dough) is baking. So I followed the directions to the letter and measure and minute and damn if I didn’t turn out some really tasty quesadillas Crispy on the outside, soft masa on the inside and not oily or falling apart when frying.

Even better, I now know what I did wrong so many times before. I’ve been making my own tortillas for years and I’ve learned the proper ratio of masa harina to water, the right heat setting for my griddle and the right amount of time per side. As it turns out, that’s two wet for thick masa dishes to be fried. I’m not going to write up the recipe, its everywhere, probably on the back of the sack of the masa. I will pass on a few tips. Mix the masa harina and just enough water until it barely holds together. Much drier than for tortillas. Let it rest for 20 or 30 minutes. Then add the lard and flour and salt and baking powder. You can mix the bejesus out of it You have to to distribute the fat and it’s not pie dough. you can beat the crap out of it. At this point, you can add a little more water for the right consistency. I can’t tell you how much. Form it into balls, size and shape depend on recipe, of course. Except you should let the balls rest a bit. It’s probably the baking powder and the fat melting , but the dough becomes not nearly as dry and sticky and you won’t hear me say this very often, “pretty easy to work with”.

Place a ball in the tortilla press in two pieces of plastic and flatten a bit, rotate the disk 180 degrees, flatten more. Peel off the top piece of plastic, cup the thick tortilla and bottom piece of plastic in one hand put a tablespoon of filling on one side and fold the other half over, remove the plastic, crimp the edges to seal (Fancy pie crimping patterns are for another day or a pie dough). Put the the quesadillas on a plate, cover with plastic and take a break to watch the second half of the NCAA game. Depending on the length of the break you’d be well advised to put the plate in the fridge. Too long at room temperature and they’ll fall apart picking them off the plate.

Turn the oil up to rippling hot, just less than smoking and fry a couple, 2 minutes per side. The important tip I got from re-reading Bayless was that reconstituted masa harina will get more brown than fresh masa. Restated, it needs to fry beyond golden, it needs to go to an almost dark brown. Drain on paper towels and keep in a warm oven while frying the rest.

Heaven should’nt be so close at hand. FWIW, I’d use a taco sauce instead of a chunky salsa but thats splitting hairs at the pin head angel dance.