© Clare Richards 2009 The last remaining bite of my first tortilla
Genuine (as opposed to supermarket shelf and chain restaurant) Mexican food is not that common in Australia. The best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten was at the end of a trip to California, Arizona and New Mexico. I’d only managed to find horrendously cheesy, carbohydrate loaded tortillas and burritos for most of the trip. As I headed out of the country there was time to spare so I stopped at a South LA Mexican restaurant near the airport, tucked in under the dank street lighting. Inside it was warm and comfortable, and I had Mole Poblano, which was filled with all the earthy, savoury chocolate flavours I’d hoped for.
Queensland and Mexico cover similar stretches of latitude either side of the equator. Queensland stretches from around 10 degrees latitude in the Torres Strait down southwards to around 28 degrees at the border with New South Wales. Mexico stretches from around 15 degrees latitude at the border with Guatemala up northwards to around 32 degrees at the border with the USA. Cairns is at 16.51 S and it’s latitudinal sister city is Acapulco at 16.51 N, so Far North Queensland relates climatically to Southern Mexico.
Why the notes on latitude? I am interested in seeing produce grown here that suits this climate, and I am delving into the tropical cuisines of the world in the process of writing my cookbook. So, because I want to cook with local ingredients, and I want to cook food from the tropical cuisines of the world, I want to see these ingredients grown here in Far North Queensland.
Inland from Cairns on the highlands of the Atherton Tablelands maize and sweetcorn grow abundantly in the fertile soils. It is a great pity, then, that there is no Australian manufacturer of the Mexican maize flour, masa. Masa is the particular flour required to make tortillas, tamales and many other classic Mexican staples. I can only presume that the flour used in all those supermarket Mexican products is imported.
So for now I’ve sourced three companies for my Mexican culinary experiments, having bought masa from Aztec Products, various chillies from Monterey Mexican Foods, and a tortilla press (to come next week) from Mayan Legacy. I’m ever hopeful that within the next few years I’ll be able to get all the ingredients I need here in Cairns from local sources (including my garden, as I’m about to plant a new lot of chillies).
Today I made my first batch of tortilla dough with yellow masa flour, and then my first tortilla which, to my delight, worked. I need to improve on the cooking time and temperature to get some searing / browning on the tortilla, but flavour-wise it was very good, with that sweet nutty aroma of maize. I served it simply with sliced avocado, finely diced red onion, a smear of chilli paste, and some perfectly ripe tomato. I followed the recipe from Monterey Mexican Foods website, but halved quantities as this was a test run:
1 cup masa flour
1/8 teaspoon flaky salt
2/3 cup warm water
Mix water with masa flour and salt to make a firm cohesive dough – neither too crumbly and dry or too wet. Rest for 30 minutes, then press out tortillas. I don’t yet have my press, so I pressed the tortilla by hand on a piece of baking paper, then once it was thin enough, placed another piece of baking paper over and gently rolled it until as thin as possible. I regularly lifted the paper and tucked the edges of the tortilla back together as it started splitting at the edges. I then cooked the tortilla for a few minutes either side in a medium-hot pan with a tiny bit of olive oil, then served it wrapped around avocado, finely diced red onion, tomato and a smear of chilli paste.
A final note: I made another batch with white masa flour for dinner, and cooked them on the highest heat of my contact grill, and this did a far better job at getting some lovely browned spots on the tortilla. Sorry, no photos of these ones, we ate them all too quickly.
© Clare Richards 2009
