Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Best Laid Plans



One of my birthday gifts this year was Diana Kennedy’s “From My Mexican Kitchen:  Techniques and Ingredients”.  It is a beautiful book and fantastic resource loaded with photographs of ingredients, equipment, and techniques.  It doesn’t have a great number of recipes, but provides instructions for making things like tortillas, tamales, and even queso fresco (fresh cheese) from scratch.

As I browsed the book, I found that several of the recipes that appealed to me required tortilla masa.  Diana Kennedy suggests that you buy the masa at a local tortilla factory, "Or as a last resort, buy the powdered stuff and hope..."  She also provides instructions for making it from scratch.  It is made from dried corn which is boiled in lime water and then ground.  I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find a source for the dried corn, but I decided to keep an eye out for it.  I checked several stores and finally found it in the international section of a local grocery store.

So I had my corn and I was psyched.  I went back to the book and read the recipe carefully.  It looked challenging in some ways, but doable.  As I read through I mentally checked off each step, “OK – I can do that, and I can do that…” until I got to the last paragraph, “Drain the corn, now nixtamalizado, and take it to a mill (molino), where traditionally it is ground – with no water added – between round, flat grinding stones to give it a smooth, soft texture.”  Um… where’s the mill?

Well, I’ve since done a little research on the web and, it turns out, I do have some options.  I happened on a website called GourmetSleuth which is sort of a cross between an on-line store and a search engine.  It also has some great content – lots of recipes and articles.  They sell specialized equipment and quite a few ingredients for Mexican cooking.  They also just happen to have an article on making homemade masa which discusses the ways that the corn can be ground.  If you’re making tamales you can use your food processor, but for tortillas you need a metate y mano or a molino.  Oooooh…so the mill (molino) is a gadget you clamp onto your counter rather than a place where you take your corn.

I think I’m going to get myself a molino – I’ll let you know how it works out!


7 comments:

santos. said...

good gravy, you're really buying a molino?! you have a blogging fortitude mine will never match. :-)

my grandmother had a molino, but when the kids flew the coop, she just used a coffee grinder for small batches....

Reid said...

Hi Cathy,

YIPPEE! New kitchen gadget time! I can't wait to see your molino and how your tortilla masa turns out! =)

Cathy said...

Santos - I know, I may be getting a little carried away. It isn't really about the blog though - it's more that I had my heart set on making the masa. It seems to figure in to so many of the recipes in the book and I really wanted to try it.

Reid - Yes, new kitchen toys are always fun!

santos. said...

hi cathy

good on ya; kudos to you for going "whole hog"!

Cathy said...

Thanks Santos!

Anonymous said...

Hi Cathy, I live in Chevy Chase and work at Dupont-- any idea where to buy some queso fresco around there? good luck with the masa!

Cathy said...

Hi Anon - no, sorry. I actually was looking for some a while back myself. I don't think I looked too hard, but I did ask in the Whole Foods near me and they didn't carry it. I've had an eye out for it ever since - I feel like I have see it once since then - possibly at the Wegman's in Virginia.