Tortillas, Frijoles Refritos, and Other Basics of Mexican Cooking

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If you decide to use lye for your hominy making, you'll find the process very similar . . . but a bit more time-consuming. For two quarts of corn, begin by adding two ounces of lye (available from any grocery store and most hardwares) to eight quarts of water. Then add the corn to the solution and bring it to a gentle boil. Cook until the hulls loosen, and allow the mixture to cool.

When the container of corn and lye has stopped steaming, slowly drain off the liquid (taking care not to splash any of the fluid on you). Then refill the pan with fresh water and drain four or five times the same as called for in the limewater method above. Only, when working with lye, you must also boil the corn for five minutes after adding each fresh change of water (that's why it takes longer to make hominy with lye than with lime). Continue this cycle until the kernels are soft, then drain them one last time. You now have the nixtamal from which masa is made.

And if all this sounds like too much work, beware! I've tried skipping the whole process and just making my tortillas from canned hominy. The results looked like tortillas all right . . . but had a canned taste that—in my estimation, at least—would scare anyone away from real Mexican food!

GRIND THAT HOMINY

If you lived in Mexico, you'd now grind your freshly made hominy on a slanted stone called a metate (may-TAW-tay) with the help of a stone rolling pin known as a mano (MAW-no). I doubt that you have those traditional implements lying around the house, but it really doesn't matter. You can achieve the same result by running the drained hominy several times through the fine blade of a food grinder. (That's a food grinder, and not a grain mill . . . not, that is, if you want to keep the mill in working order.) The resulting masa should be just moist enough to hold together well—something like pie dough—and if it isn't, you can add small amounts of water until it is.

NOW FOR THE FUN PART!

If you're like me, you won't be able to resist at least one attempt at making your tortillas the way that Mexican señoras do. After all, it looks so easy: They gather up a ball of dough about the size of an apricot and pat it back and forth between their hands—flatter and flatter—until . . . Presto! A perfect tortilla!

At least that's the way it works for them. But not for this kid. My approach always turns out more like "pat, pat, plop" . . . and the "plop" is another of many sticky mistakes on the kitchen floor.

But there's more than one way to skin a cat or mash a tortilla. There are, for instance, those handy little devices known as rolling pins. And there are also very worthwhile cast-iron machines called tortilla presses. The latter are built to withstand extremely heavy usage and, if you can't scare one up locally, you can order it by mail for $4.95 (plus shipping and California residents be sure to add 6% sales tax) from La Mexicana, 401 11th Ave., Dale, Calif. 93215.

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