The Frugal Guy Cook

Once upon a time, Deb posted her mother’s flour tortilla recipe at our former joint/family/anything blog, Accidental Verbosity, before moving to Blogblivion. We eat these fairly regularly, and once etsimated the cost for perhaps 16 of them at under 40 cents, versus, say, $1.69 for a pack of 8 commercial ones. You pay to save time and effort and get uniformity, but even Manny’s brand isn’t as good as homemade. It probably costs more now, given the recent increases in grocery costs and particularly, we just noticed on having to replace an empty, Crisco. That resulted in buying store brand soy/cottonseed shortening comparable to the current Crisco formulation. Traditionally one would use lard, which Deb almost got me as it was available and inexpensive. Definitely have to try that sometime.

This is a repost and, because it wasn’t written by me, guest recipe, inspired because I recently started making these myself, and found that the recipe was harder to find searching than it ought have been. I realized I’d started a food and cooking blog but never posted this here. Duh.

This was something Deb knew how to do inside out and I deferred to her, as one of her specialties. I’ll comment further at the end, but here is her original text:

Mama Jedi’s Flour Tortillas

We’ve been experimenting with different things to do with flour tortillas ever since we finally got around to trying my mother’s recipe for them. She used to make these often when I was a kid, since they’re better and cheaper than store-bought (and, I believe, because at the time it was tough to get even a passable grocery-store tortilla in rural Minnesota, a situation that has since changed). She taught some of the other women in the neighborhood how to make them, too, and they’ve been a hit with all who have tried them.

Mama Jedi’s Flour Tortillas

4 cups flour
1/2 cup shortening, in small cubes
1 & 1/4 cups warm water
1 & 1/2 teaspoons salt

Dissolve salt in water and set aside. Rub shortening into flour with fingertips. (I’ve got the warehouse-club-sized can of shortening, so I meaure it into a cup then divide it as I add it to the flour…instead of a single lump, little spoonfuls. Works just as well…the point is to have it in small pieces so it’s easier to rub into the flour.) Gradually add salt water to flour mixture. (The trick here is getting the flour/water ratio right so the dough is smooth rather than sticky or flour-y. I always seem to need a tablespoon more water or flour to make it just right, depending on how perfectly I’ve measured and the weather that day.) Knead well. Set aside covered for a minimum of three hours (I wrap it in plastic wrap, to keep the dough from getting a “skin,” then toss it back in the bowl and cover with a towel.). Knead again. Divide into 1 & 1/2 inch portions and roll out on floured board. (I shape the dough into a cylinder, then cut off the appropriate portion for the size I want for each tortilla. Usually takes me a test tortilla or two to get it right. The best part of that is that the mistakes are so tasty…yum. I also roll them out right on my countertop…a board is certainly not required, unless you have tile. *grin* The dough should be good and stretchy and a bit of a pain to roll out, and tends to shrink slightly when transferred to the pan, so roll ‘em thin.) Cook each on a hot griddle/frying pan until it bubbles and browns slightly. Makes anywhere from 12 to 18 tortillas, depending on size, thickness, and how many get eaten along the way.

As for what we’ve done with them…we’ve made burritos and quesadillas and even chicken and veggie wraps in the last couple of weeks, and I have no doubt some of the turkey will find it’s way into them in one form or another. Very versatile and very, very yummy.

The first time I made these, I became the official tortilla maker, they came out so well. The directions above say knead again after the dough sits at least three hours. Turns out that Deb didn’t actually do that when she made them. I did it minimally at best. It doesn’t seem to hurt them and anecdotally may be better, though certainly if the dough needs a little extra to get the texture feeling better while making it into cylinders.

I use one of those Pyrex cups that has lines up to a cup but room to add an extra quarter cup by eye. I microwave cold water a minute or 90 seconds, stir in the half tablespoon of salt to dissolve, and set it aside. I’ve been using about a cup in practice.

I make sure the flour is worked into the shortening extremely thoroughly. It’s somewhat like making pie crust, but without the objective of flaky.

I flip them over and over while rolling, to hel combat the curling and get them thin enough.

Basically it’s an easy easy thing to make. The big consideration is the sitting time for the dough. It’s fast compared to making bread. It’s even relatively fast to roll out, and I roll a couple then start cooking as I roll more.

They are so useful and so cheap. We’ve had the challenge of a baby with food sensitivities that seem to be based around salicyslates, and these were a perfect introduction to wheat-based foods, which as expected don’t bother him. Being simple and homemade, I knew exactly what was in them. Not like, for instance, whoile wheat pasta that contains corn meal, which he can’t have. But I digress.

Enjoy!

I’ve been meaning for ages to post this guest recipe courtesy of Beth Mauldin. I’ve used it many times as my preferred banana bread recipe since she sent it to me over a year ago.

It’s also flexible. I’ve substituted a little corn flour into it, which gave it a grainier, almost dry result, which turned out especially good for banana bread french toast. The amount of banana can vary significantly and it’ll still be good. It can be doubled readily, as I did with the latest batch. I ran out of brown sugar, so for the two it was one part brown to almost three parts white sugar, plus a squirt of honey. I also added an extra egg, making it an egg and a half per loaf (large eggs, not extra large as I normally prefer – again, it’s not exacting). The dough was the least wet I have ever seen, with the modified double batch, puffed up higher than normal, and gave a delicious result.

Let’s get to it…

Beth Mauldin’s Banana Bread

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/2 cups bananas (usually somewhere near 2 bananas)

Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Add in the oil, milk and egg, mix, then add and mix in the bananas last.

Bake in a loaf pan, greased as appropriate, at 350 for 55 – 60 minutes. I find it’s usually shorter, but it’ll depend on the foibles of your oven.

Enjoy!

Here is the first ever Married Guy Cook guest recipe:

Honey Mustard Chicken with Potatoes and Vegetable of your Choice

Need:

1. Get home from work. Put your stuff down. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Wash the potatoes. Cut them in half, then cut each half into three or more sections lengthwise.
3. Place potatoes in large bowl. Pour in about 2 tbsp of oil and sprinkle on 1 tbsp of seasoning (1.5 tbsp of seasoning if the potatoes are those massive ones you get sometimes).
4. Toss potatoes/oil/seasoning until evenly distributed.
5. Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil (or use a large glass dish that is oven-safe). Lay out the potatoes on the cookie sheet.
6. Put potatoes into oven; set timer for 15 minutes.
7. Put chicken in microwave to defrost (unless you let it defrost overnight/during the day).
8. Go upstairs and change out of your work clothes. It’s okay if you take longer than 15 minutes; the potatoes won’t burn.
9. When timer goes off, flip potatoes (this takes a while) and put back in oven for another 20-25 minutes.
10. Get a large skillet and cover the bottom with a thin layer of cooking oil. Put it on the stove at low heat to warm up.
11. Squirt a generous amount of honey mustard onto a paper plate.
12. If chicken is not already cut into strips, do so. They don’t have to be thin.
13. Coat each piece of chicken with the honey mustard as if you were dredging it in an egg/flour mixture.
14. Place chicken strips into skillet and turn up the heat to 6 or 7 (medium-high).
15. Empty vegetables from bag into small pot. Put in enough water to cover 3/4 of the vegetables.
16. Put the pot on a back burner on high and cover it. Stir every five minutes or so. Once the water is boiling, it should be about five more minutes until the veggies are done. Taste one to test it.
17. Flip chicken every five minutes or so until done. If you don’t know how to tell when it’s done, cut a piece. If it’s pink inside, keep cooking.
18. When done cooking, drain oil from chicken.
19. When done cooking, take potatoes out of oven.
20. When done cooking, drain water from vegetables.
21. Arrange food on plates. Serve.
22. Get the kids to do the cleaning. After all, you cooked, right?

It seems complicated but it took me about 45 minutes to do all that last night, and I got other stuff done in between, like playing with the baby a little and giving her medicine, and also changing clothes and reading a few pages in a book.

This recipe, and the whole idea of guest recipes, is courtesy of the former blogger known as Josh Cohen of Multiplementality.com, who also posted at Wizbang Sports and Wizbang Pop, and can now occasionally be found blogging or posting under his real name on 11Alive.com.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds great to me. My father likes to make a plain version of the roast potatoes. After having garlic and rosemary fries while playing pool in Monterey with Deb, Denise and April, I eventually tried making rosemary fries myself. I hear they were yummy. But seriously, I did get to taste them, and they were good, but could have been even better. The potatoes above sound like a nice cross. Roasting saves work, but it’s not far removed from fries and can be seasoned, if anything more easily.