Pressing Matters

I’ve written before about our ongoing quest to make our own Mexican food here in Canada, since things like corn tortillas and mole sauce are a bit difficult to come by in this area.  We’ve since learned to make corn tortillas that were tasty but a bit…rustic, since it’s almost impossible to get them perfectly flat when one is just using a rolling pin.

Over the holidays, however, our dear friends Lisa and Rohan very generously gave us their old tortilla press, and our home tortilla-making has since been revolutionized.

Of course, just getting your hands on a press isn’t the end of the story.  Our first few attempts were just as thick and cracked as our previous endeavors, and quite a few stuck to the press itself.  We were beginning to despair of ever having decent home-made tacos, when Josh had a flash of enlightenment in the form of  a Youtube search.

It turns out that putting plastic wrap between the tortilla and the press is key, as is a properly heated (which is to say, ridiculously hot) pan for cooking them.  We don’t have a griddle, so we simply used the largest pan we own:

By the time we were through, we had some pretty tasty tortillas on our hands, which were not only thinner and more tender than those resulting from our last endeavor, but more flexible, too–a key feature, when you’re trying to eat tacos without winding up with a lap full of beans.

Tofu Tacos

I’ve mentioned before how much I love Mexican food.  I should add, with this post, that this love encompasses all foods even vaguely Mexican, including Tex-Mex, Fresh-Mex, and tofu-centric Mexican spin-offs.  This recipe is an adaptation of the Moosewood Restaurant’s tofu burritos, and it’s currently my favorite thing to make and eat (though I should note that such favorites are subject to my frequently unpredictable whims).  In fact, this is one of those cases in which I think my adaptation makes the recipe even better…which is difficult to accomplish, given my predilection for anything with even the slightest hint of cumin.

I started out by cubing a block of tofu, patting the cubes dry, and then browning them in a few tablespoons of canola oil and a good amount of Spanish-style grill seasoning.  If you’ve ever tried to brown tofu, you know that this process takes a bit of time (because of the significant moisture content), and this may be why the Moosewood recipe doesn’t call for it.  I, however, think that this process improves the taste of tofu by a factor of about eleventy-billion (who doesn’t like fried stuff, right?), so I never skip it.  In other applications, I’ve been known to bake the tofu instead of frying it, but the splurge here is worth it.  And when it comes down to brass tacks, you’re already eating tofu.  So get over yourself.

*Ahem*

Anyway, while the tofu was browning, I sauteed chopped red bell pepper, onion, garlic and jalapeno in a separate skillet.  When these started to get a bit of color, I added paprika, cumin, coriander, and oregano and let it all hang out for a bit.  I then added the browned (crunchy, delicious) tofu, chopped tomatoes, some soy sauce (look, I said it wasn’t exactly traditional), corn and chopped black olives.  When everything had a chance to combine and warm through, we were ready to eat.

I stuffed the tasty mixture into wheat tortillas–it makes up for the frying–and topped the whole thing with sliced avocado and my very own cilantro.  We had rice on the side, but I have to tell you that it wasn’t much to write home about.  I’m still looking for a good Mexican rice recipe that doesn’t involve chicken stock–let me know if you have one.  Rice aside, though, the tacos were amazing, and I can’t wait for lunch today: leftovers.

The Ongoing Mexican Food Quest

I love Mexican food.  Love.  It.  So one of the great disappointments of my time thus far in Ontario has been the outright paucity of any decent food that could even be classified as Tex-Mex.  This extends from the unavailability of corn tortillas in any but the most obscure health food shops (and even then they’re not much to talk about) to the tragic state of Mexican restaurants here in Guelph.  Recently Josh and I decided to make a go of the one Mexican place we’d heard about in town…and, well, let’s just say that the name itself should have been a give-away.

Tragically, “Latino’s” was not what we hoped it would be…and in fact, the oddly-placed green salad with shredded carrots and dill ranch dressing that sat next to my enchiladas and cinnamon-spiced rice was strangely evocative of another bizarre “Mexican” experience from years ago.  Before I moved to Nashville, I spent a month of the summer in Citta di Castello, Italy.  It was a lovely experience, save the unexpected fact that 4 weeks of Italian food (for breakfast, lunch and dinner) was simply too much.  I wanted–truly longed for–beans, cumin and peppers.  So I dragged my friends to the one Mexican restaurant I’d seen on the edge of town, insisting that I’d pay, and that whatever happened, it couldn’t be as bad as facing another plate of pasta.  Well, the short version of the story is that I was wrong, but it resulted in this fabulous photo.

The "Gordita"

This is my friend Jeff, posing with what purports to be a “Gordita.”  If you look closely, you’ll notice that it is in fact two baked potatoes, which are sliced open and filled with something that appears to be chili mixed with ketchup, and finished with corn chips poked into their sides.  There were more ridiculous renditions of traditional Mexican menu items that night (which I can only assume were the result of an extremely creative cook who had heard the names of Mexican dishes, but never actually tasted any of them), but this is the only remaining photographic evidence.  I’ll simply report that Thousand Island salad dressing figured prominently, and leave it at that.

At any rate, this “Latino’s” experience–with its non sequitur of dill sauce–reminded me very much of our Italian fiasco, but without the pitcher of Sangria.  Needless to say, this was disappointing.

The day following, on a quest to make our own Mexican food, Josh and I stopped at a few stores looking for dried Ancho chiles.  To make this story somewhat less arduous, I’ll simply report that most people we spoke to seemed not to understand that more than one kind of dried chile existed in the world.  After we explained that, no, we weren’t looking for red pepper flakes, they pointed us to another place in town that supposedly sold Mexican food, the proprietor of which might be kind of enough to sell us some ingredients.  It was thus that we found ourselves at a place called the “Salsateria.”

Rebel foods, indeed.  I’ll simply relay the exact conversation:

Me: Hi, I heard you guys might sell Moles and stuff.  Is that true?

Worker: What?

Me: I heard you sell Moles.  Is that not the case any more?

Worker: Wait, you mean you want some Guacamole?

Alas, it was not to be.  Josh wanted to stay for a burrito, but, jaded, I declared that I would trust no Mexican restaurant whose workers had not heard of Mole.  As fortune would have it, though, immediately across the street was an Asian foods market, where we managed to find all manner of chiles (plus some curry-making items to be featured in later postings!).  Thus, finally, we were able to create our own Mexican food which, though not perfect, was really, really good.

We made vegetarian chorizo tacos with home-made corn tortillas, plus a quick rice.  The chorizo was actually a two-day process, since it had to marinate in the fridge (with cumin, oregano, cloves, the aforementioned chiles, vinegar, onions and garlic)…and it was absolutely worth the wait.  It’s actually made from TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein), which is incredibly cheap to buy in bulk and renders a much better flavor than frozen soy crumbles.  The end result of the veggie chorizo was rich and spicy, which paired nicely with the fresh cilantro and tortilla.  I would like to have had sliced avocado instead of cheese, and maybe a few black beans to give an additional textural variation.

Still tasty, though, and without even a hint of salad dressing.