Roberto's Beans and Tortillas

One of the foods we missed the most while in Tasmania was Mexican food.

We have lived here since 2006, and just this last year have small Mexican food stalls started appearing here in Hobart.  I love Mexican because it is one of the easiest vegetarian "really don't" hate meat eaters meal to make for everyone.

Sometimes you need a friend to get you from "We really should." into "Gee that was easy."

Our friend,Roberto, was the catalyst for us making our own beans and tortillas and we do, quite often.  Zok has gotten a tortilla warmer and two tortilla presses.

An advantage to tortilla is that corn meal is a great substitute for the gluten intolerant.  

Here are Roberto's recipes that got us started.

I will put up the corn recipe in a separate post.

Flour Tortillas:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder (not soda!)

3/4 cup of 'hot'! water (we use the tea kettle)

1/4 cup of vegetable shortening *

1. Mix all the dry ingrediants: flour, powder, salt

2. Cut in the shortening*

3. Add hot water, if the mixture feels too sticky (it should at the end come cleanly from your hands and the bowl) add more flour (tip: have a flour shaker so adding in flour is easy, even, and gradual)

4. Knead the dough for 5 minutes (Zok now uses his Kitchen Aid for all and any mixing)

5. Cover dough for 10 minutes

6. separate dough into balls to either press with your tortilla press or to roll out with your rolling pin.

7. Fry in a hot pan- the dough will bubble up a bit and that is a good time to flip it.  Otherwise you can just continually flip until done 

*In Australia and Sweden the vegetable shortening is some form of coconut, and it comes cold and we have to grate it with the small part of a cheese grater.

If you are using soft American shortening you could just put in small scoops at a time.

The tortilla warmer does keep the tortillas hot.

Pinto Beans: (We actually use a variation of Bolito beans because that is what we can find here and in Stockholm-they work really well).

2-3 cups beans

6-8 cloves garlic

1 medium onion (I use white or yellow as I find they dissolve in, leaving flavor but not too concentrated a flavor)

Salt and Pepper (to taste)

1 tbl. cumin seeds

1. Separate and rinse beans (compost any funky looking ones or sometimes there are non-bean bits depending on how you buy your beans)

2. Chop onion and half the garlic

3. Crush your cumin seeds, and then crush the rest of your garlic into the crushed seeds, I use a mortar and pestle, and then use water to rinse the whole lot into the pot

4. Add all to a pot with a large bottom (wide as opposed to deep)

5. Add enough water to cover to about 2 inches above the beans.

6. First bring to a rapid boil for about 8 minutes, then lower to a simmer.

Cover and remember to check often, and stir often.

I cheat a bit and crush my beans towards the end with a potato masher, but I do spend hours letting them slow cook.  They always seem to taste best when I don't speed up the process.  You can always add more water if too much evaporates off.  This will happen if you are cooking them faster.

If the flavor isn't quite right I will add more cumin or garlic.

Appetizers: Dips; White Bean Dip

White Bean Dip

This recipe is really all about the roasted garlic.

This is the amount we make for six to eight people but of course there is never only one dip on the table.

1 cup of white beans soaked over night

Rinse your soaked beans, to make sure there are no funky beans.

Cover beans by about one inch of water (you can always add more water, more easily then reducing any extra water out)-

3-5 cloves of garlic whole.

Bring to a quick boil, then simmer them for about two hours, with the lid on during this time they will get soft and break down a bit.

While the beans are cooking:

take a whole head of garlic, cut the tip of the top off and lightly cover with about 2-3 tablespoons of water then

  caramelize (actually I should write 'sweeten' as you are not actually adding an sugar)  the head by baking it in the oven (we use an enclosed terracotta pot made for this purpose) at 175 c. for about 40-50 minutes.  (Zok will tell you that you can "smell" when the garlic is ready).
Then puree your garlic and beans together, sometimes I add a bit of lemon juice when I have a fresh lemon on hand, you can add water if you think the dip is too thick.

The trick to cooking beans quickly is to rapidly boil them.
While, I prefer the slow cook on beans to make beans for my burritos, and also for the recipe here, I will and do make beans quickly on short notice. I find that the flavor isn't as rich when I do a quick boil though.

For instance, I boiled both black beans and kidney beans recently to make chili.
I rinsed the beans, covered the 2 cups of beans with about 6 cups of water (enough so they would stick in anyway as I was just going to drain them and start again when I started my chili).

To compensate for the short time, I did boil them with:
3 Bay leaves
1 small onion chopped
2 gloves of garlic sliced
1 tsp of olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Sweet paprika sprinkled on top before serving

I did a high, fast boil for 10 minutes then a consistent slow boil for the rest of the hour.  Then I drained them (they were cooked but unbroken) and added them into my chili recipe as if they had been canned not fresh beans.