Making Tortillas

On Thanksgiving, I shared something of American culture with Jaq and her family, so the day after, she taught me something of Nica culture: tortilla making!

I can't believe it's taken me over a year and a half to finally do this, but I finally tried my hand at making tortillas. Here's how the process goes:
1. The day before, Jaquelin mixes ashes with corn kernels and some water. They site like this all day until evening when she rinses them out until the ash is cleaned off.
2. Next day, Jaquelin and Eddie wake up around 4ish. Eddie takes the maiz to the electric grinder, molino, so the corn can be made into the masa. I don't know what time the molino opens, but it closes around 7am. One time Jaq slept in and had to rush to take the corn to the grinder. Ni quiera Dios
3. Before you even touch your masa, you gotta make sure you set up your komals. They are the surfaces where you heat the tortillas. One is over the hottest part of the fire(the end of the sticks) and another is farther down the wood where it isn't as hot.

Now you get what I mean by komal right?

4. To make the tortillas, you need a piece of plastic in the shape of a circle. This kind of serves as a guide for size, while also serving as the smooth service where you shape the tortillas.

 

5. Then you take out a small handful of masa, shape it into a fat, lil pancake and then you start flattening it out by slapping with your right fingers. While you're doing this, your left hand is turning the plastic and maintaining a smooth border to your tortilla. It is a lot harder than I thought! I made about 20 practice tortillas before I finally made one Jaquelin approved. I put it on the komal, flipped it after about 2 minutes, patted it down when it started to rise, and then it was all ready. Tasted great fresh off the fire!

The pro- she made it through all that masa in less than 10min

I let Jaquelin do about 15 tortillas before I interrupted her to teach me. Eddie had to leave to head out to the fields to check on the beans and grains by 5:30am. Since he wouldn't be coming back till 1 or so, Jaquelin packs him a meal of fried beans with about 5 tortillas.

The novice. But look at my form!

Final result!

My tortilla was smaller than hers because Jaquelin told me to start with a small amount. By the time I got the hang of making tortillas, she had finished all the masa.