Homemade Corn Tortillas

Over the past few years I have seriously developed my love of Mexican food. This is a food I have always loved but never tried to make it at home aside from the boxed meals, you know the ones I mean. Chris got me started on making Mexican food from scratch. One important thing I have learned from making more authentic Mexican foods at home is that you can specialize them to your own tastes. Sure, this probably makes them less authentic but 100 times even more delicious. Of course, you might as well make your own tortillas too, why not? Everything is better homemade right?

You will need a special type of flour called Masa Harina. It is ground corn. More specifically it is a corn that has been soaked in lime, dried, then ground. You can find it in the ethnic section of your grocery store.

This dough is super simple, it is just water added to the Masa Harina until a dough forms. It will dry out easily so you need to keep the dough covered while you form your tortillas.

You will need to roll these out by hand unless you happen to have a tortilla press. Be sure to use plastic wrap to cover your press or you will have a mess. One piece each for the top and bottom.

Roll a bit of the dough into a ball and place it more toward the hinge instead of the center. You'll see how the press pushes the dough outward. If you put it right in the center it will smoosh off the end of the press and make a mess.

Now press and there you go, one flat disk of dough.

Now to cook. On pretty high heat, cook until browned slightly on both sides.

There is a nice little stack.

Now for the real reason I made tortillas, quesadillas. I used left over tangy slow cooker pork and cheese. Put that between two homemade tortillas and heat until the inside is hot and gooey.

Be sure to flip.

Top with salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, and avocado. Sour cream would be great as well. These are so tasty and really so easy.

Tangy Slow Cooker Pork

I must say up front that this was not my favourite recipe. It had all the components of recipes I like. It was easy, it built up flavour, and it had familiar ingredients. In the end, it was missing something for me. I would make this again but I would change it up and add more spices. I pulled this recipe out of a random cookbook on my shelf as part of my desire to cook from the books I already. I would say this was a 6/10 for me. My family liked it, however, so maybe it was just me.

Start with a seasoned flour coating for your pork roast. This was just salt, pepper, and paprika.

Heat up a bit of oil in a pan. This is to build the crust.

There is the star. This is a very lean cut of pork, as you can see, and but it takes flavour really well. It is pretty much a blank slate to be built upon.

Cover your roast completely in the seasoned flour.

And start browning. The heat should be high enough that you get a nice golden colour but don't let it burn. Make sure to get some colour all over.

Prepare your veggies. They just get a fine dice and set aside for now.

Keep turning your roast.

Nearly there!

Now for the sauce. Move the roast to the slow cooker and add the veggies to the hot pan. Soften the veggies and add a can of tomato sauce. Slow cook for 5 hours.

After 5 hours, the sauce comes out thick like a gravy.

The meat is very tender.

I served this with mashed potatoes. My secret weapon for mashed potatoes now is to use buttermilk. Do it, you will LOVE the extra zip and creaminess.

I think in the future I would add sugar to the sauce as I found the tomato flavour to be a bit on the bitter side. It was good but not exactly what I was expecting.

Sarah's Slow Cooker Pork

We went early to the airport on Saturday to pick up Chris and had a bit of extra time to look around. We found dinosaurs, Chris (eventually), and not much else.

A big one.

A little one, looking scared and a Phoenix.

Phoenix making faces.

Towers of luggage.

Despite travelling back from Germany and being jet lagged, Chris managed to get the beer started on Sunday. There will be more on that in the weeks to come. Here is a teaser.

 A really big pot.

A few things to go in.

Munich Helles of course.  What other type of beer would we make?

I will be taking more pictures and doing a proper post on the beer making process and will keep you updated through the weeks until it's finally time to taste. I can't wait!

Last week, a friend sent me a recipe to try. Naturally, I did. It called for stove top dressing which I don't buy so I looked up a recipe for it. This recipe ended up being pretty tasty!  You can find it here. This was also a perfect way for me to use up some bread that was going a bit stale too!

I started by basically making croutons.  I cubed up some bread and put it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

While, the bread was in the oven I mixed together the spices.

This calls for a few things but it was worth it. I didn't have sage so I just used poultry seasoning.

Let the croutons cool.

Put everything into a container with a lid.

Shake it up.  Simple right?

I had pulled out a pork roast and I cut into chops.

The pork goes into the slow cooker with one can of mushroom soup and one can of milk.

Top with two cups of stuffing mix.

Set it to cook for 5 hours.  I did it on high.

The pork will be falling apart, it's so tender. The sauce is rich and flavourful, the stuffing on top is soft and crunchy and so good!  I served this with a little rice and a nice salad.

Thanks for the yummy recipe Sarah!  Phoenix and I loved it and I would definitely make this again.