thirtyfour tortillas

Look
At
This
Tiny
(impractical)
Tortilla
Press
That I got from a hectic market in Mexico City, which is about one million years ago now *insert loudly crying face emoji*

To make tiny impractical tortillas. But they are so cute!
And you can eat like 50 of them since that's how bite-sized things work as I understand it.




These days when one person speaks of a food item or posts about a food item, it seems that item is suddenly everywhere. Everyone's making it and eating it and rubbing it in my face because I most likely do not have the ability to create it and put it in my mouth. Unless it is made predominantly of butter and flour. (Why, yes, I am again pretty much out of perishables except for cabbage, thanks for asking.)
Such was the case for tacos. And then I couldn't stop thinking about tacos... like these yummy bebes from a taco truck across from West Alabama Ice House in Houston. I just want some expertly made weird meats with nothing but onion, cilantro, and punishingly hot hot sauce please.

But I am still on a mission to cReAtE SpAcE.. in my pantry.
You'll be happy to know I have cleared out the 1.5c of masa flour I had left to make some scallion tortillas - a small homage to scallion pancakes.
The rest of the spread came together thanks to an unexpected craving for refried beans, which I know little about except that it's beans liquified in lard right? I don't know, but that's basically what I was going for here with some refried black beans. These guys were boiled until just soft with a couple bay leaves, making sure there's still like two cups of liquid left. Removed them from the pot to fry diced onions and garlic and sage in lots and lots of pork fat. I threw in some reserved sichuan peppercorns from yesterday's mango cakes for the hell of it just to sneak in some Asian-ness, as I do. When there was significant browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, I dumped in all but maybe a handful of the beans and some more water and cooked until it was soft enough to puree with an immersion blender. I finished it off with a couple more spoonfuls of pork fat (because why the hell not) with the reserved whole beans. Yum.
The chili sauce ended up being less chili and more sauce. I soaked some dried NM chilies, blistered a quarter of an onion in a cast iron, and pureed that with some of the soaking liquid. Fried about half a T of tomato paste in oil until it was super fragrant and orange, and then dumped the chili puree to cook down until a little thickened.
For some unexpected freshness, Joyce came by just in time with a head of cabbage and a container of cherry tomatoes. So I quartered a handful of the tomatoes and tossed them with lemon juice, herb salt, scallions, and lots and lots of cilantro flowers.

Layered it up. And plowed through the entire plate of tortillitas (this is a made-up word I'm adopting now).

Eaten while doing little else. Truly just enjoying the interactive lunch I spent all morning making for myself.

Bread baby had no ear, but he did have a fun hojicha swirl. Not the most obvious roasty tea flavor but you can tell there's something there that isn't pure sourdough.

I made another batch of oat milk in the morning, and stared at the ball of wet oats that had been stripped of their milk for a good two seconds before I decided they had to go into cookies.

Miso cookies adapted from Michelle to be exact.

1/2c butter

1/2c sugar

1t molasses

1/4c sweetened condensed milk

2T miso

~3/4c wet oats (leftover from homemade oat milk)

1/2t baking soda

1/2t baking powder

1 1/3c AP flour

Eaten as ice cream sammiches with sweet potato ice cream from maybe five months ago (?)...

...for Sunday fika with Joyce.
Complete with coffee whiskey cocktail, most tender red bean loaf, and oolong shortbreads.
Welcome to our new quarantined tradition.

pc: joyce

Backtracking into Saturday fika.
cinnamon rolls + calafate hibiscus sangria

pc: joyce