tekobo

The irony of this conversation @dstr8 was that my first time tortilla flipper for New Year's was getting the puff and smashing down the tortillas because he thought it was a bad thing! I had to explain to him that he wouldn't find himself a Mexican husband if he didn't demonstrate his tortilla puff. I find that tortillas used straight from the heat tend to crack and that a few minutes rest in a hot, lidded dish gives them just the right flexibility. We went to a lot of trouble to heat up our tortillas on a griddle when we came to serve people at the party but I now wonder if it would not have been just as good to stick them in the microwave and wrap them in a towel to keep them warm and stop them drying out. A friend of ours has been re-heating his in a steam oven. He reports good puff on reheating and, more importantly, good eating. So, we have found lots of ways to puff but even when there is no puff a little rest seems to do the trick.

This was the view from my allotment this morning. It is one of 515 small plots that our local council allocates to vegetable growers at this location. We were 7 years on the waiting list and when my name got to the top of the list 15 years ago I made a mad dash to select a plot by the harbour. I am so glad I did.

Wow. That's a lot of different variables you have tested Dan. I get reliable puffing results whenever I use a very hot metal griddle/comal. The mix seems to matter much less.

Now that is a sneaky way to introduce a new grill to us. A 38! Something else to covet. Thanks @DennisLinkletter! I always find it easier to visual size with food on the grill. This is my 32 fully loaded with about 6.5kg (14lb+) of chicken thighs. They were touching edge to edge when I started the cook.

Hooray! Another convert. Tacos al pastor are soooooo good.

Happy New Year. Nice looking spread @PVPAUL. Looks like we both had a good taco night. Tacos are much less common here in the UK so our friends were surprised and blown away by the food, particularly as most of them have nothing to compare my skill level with! First the tortillas. With me rolling and pressing and a friend cooking, we made 308 tortillas in 2.5 hours. I don't have any pics of the process but we had four going at once on my large heavy weight griddle. We covered them over but after six hours waiting the top tortillas were a little curled up, as per photos below. We managed to revive them on the comal and they came out well on the night. We have some left over and I am looking forward to seeing how they perform after being frozen. The friend who helped me is in his late seventies and had never seen a blue corn tortilla before. His first question was "how are you going to turn that into something edible?" We went from that to him comparing the tortilla to a mould (he used to be a university lecturer in biology). He was finally converted by the beauty of watching a pink tortilla rise on the griddle and once he tasted a taco al pastor he became a fully fledged taco evangelist. And here is the spread, ready for people to dive in. We learned lessons from parties past and didn't put all the food out at once, replenishing bowls as needed. The tacos al pastor stole the show, right behind the crispy chicken skin. Everyone loved the home made crema Mexicana, made simply by mixing double cream and buttermilk and leaving in the dough proofer for 36 hours. Best wishes for the New Year to you all and thank you for all the help and advice over the years.

Thanks @Troble! I could not quite remember how to cook the Al Pastor so I went back to your post for temps and times. All under control, I think. Apart from the blustery wind and rain but that is the UK for you. Happy New Year All.

Way to go @PVPAUL! Will be interested in seeing how yours turn out and in learning about your Mexican green pork recipe. I was very pleased to have hit on a method for toasting the chillis without dying of coughing at the same time! Not the first time my KK has come to the rescue. I need to do my final round of shopping today and I realise I can't do that without knowing how many people are turning up. The problem is, I am not sure how many I invited. Happily, I issued most invites by email so I will tot them up and then figure out by how much I have to over cater. Looking forward to seeing others' taco photos from new year!

Thank you for all the input on tortilla warming. We tried re-heating three ways last night. There were willing testers, particularly as we had a whole deboned and KK roasted chicken as taco filling. Mathod 1 - Steam the tortillas and then heat, two by two per @Syzygies,, on my metal "comal". Method 2 - As per Rick Bayless' second method, start with a pair of tortillas, heat one side on the comal, turn over, stack another tortialla on top, turn over, repeat until you have a stack of about ten and one side of each tortilla has seen some heat. Method 3 - Go full @PVPAUL and heat on open flame, two by two. Method 2 won the comp. Method 1 restored some pliability to the tortillas but also a slightly unpleaseant dampness. Extra step of steaming also introduced more work so it quickly lost favour. Method 3 is speedy but risky on the fingers and, without the resting stage in a warmer, the tortillas were more brittle and liable to break if you made up a tortilla straight away. As for the Rick Bayless v Diana Kennedy debate raised by @Syzygies? Thanks to recommendations from the forum I bought both books when I started my Mexican food journey. I have cooked recipes from both but I generally end up reaching for my two tacos books - Tacos: Recipes and Provocations and Breddos Tacos. The possibilities with tacos seem endless and these two books include interesting salsas and roasts, enough to keep me occupied until I die (eventually) or get fed up of tacos (unlikely).

Starting to prep for our New Year's Eve party, four days out. Today was marinade and sauce day with a little bit of tortilla action thrown in for good measure. I picked a recipe for chicken tacos with chilmole. The recipe said that preparing the chilmole would remove the ability for the air in your kitchen to sustain life, such is the level of capsaicin that would be released when you roasted the 100 arbol and 8 ancho chilies to the level of blackness required to make the sauce. I had a simple solution to that - fire up my 23 KK, get it well heat soaked and "broil" (we say grill in the UK) the chillis in there. I also made the al pastor marinade as per @Troble's recipe. I doubled the recipe. Our sturdy Vitamix had a job on its hands, getting all that achiote blended in! See this post for more about tacos al pastor After all that work I ended up with three tubs of al pastor marinade and one of chilmole. I also wanted to experiment with tortillas. I started off with beautiful purple corn. This is following the wash after nixtamalisation. Some people say to wash a lot, some say to wash a little. This time I washed a lot. Just depends on when I remember that I don't need to slough off ALL of the outside of the kernel. Machine in action, grinding the corn. IMG_4010.MOV Working on my own I managed to make 42 tortillas in under half an hour. I have left them to cool and will test the reheating methods tomorrow. 42. The Answer to Life the Universe and everything. It is a sign.

Thanks for the explanation @C6Bill!

IMG_3981.mov Late to the party. Merry Christmas. Went for simple, reliable chook cook for my Christmas.

That pic looks gorgeous @remi! @jonj I don't know that I am likely to cook a prime rib anytime soon. I tend to cook one rib wide joints. More surface area for the char and also the fact that I would cook one blue for me and rare/medium rare for other people. The only annoying thing is that people who profess to want a medium rare cook end up eating my blue steak and enjoying it, leaving too much of the medium rare for me to eat. Oh well, if that is the price of converting people to the dark (and wobbly) side, I might be happy to pay it.

Oooh. Thank you @PVPAUL! Both methods look good and reasonably fast. Will try both and report back.

I was a little lost with this one until I realised it was because I don't actually know what a prime rib is. Turns out we call it a standing rib roast here in the UK. Yes, I agree with @djami's bottom line - you don't want to overcook one of those! I had not heard of @C6Bill's twist - taking the meat off to rest before searing it. Is that just because it is the time it takes to get the flames going or is there a benefit from resting the meat before searing it? I might have been tempted to sear first over flames before the KK is heat soaked and while the meat was cool to reduce chances of cooking the inside. I might then steal @C6Bill's idea and rest the meat while you let the flames die down and get the KK to target temp for the indirect cook.

Tee hee. I am thinking of christening @Syzygies's method the Noah's Ark. Fillings are easy by comparison - chicken skin, cubed chicken thigh and pork Al Pastor. We have a couple of vegetarians and will have beans, squash and avocado to satisfy them and accompany the meat protein. Looking forward to the jeopardy!

Feliz Navidad indeed! The challenge here is wanting to be "authentic" while not chaining myself to the stove and keeping people waiting on the night. Both of the options that you describe - two by two and/or re-heating directly over a gas flame - are less work than starting tortillas from scratch but still require a lot of activity at point of service. I was hoping for a towel saviour. Maybe one where I wrapped a stack of tortillas in a towel and heated them up either in an oven or, horror of horrors, in a microwave. When I serve tortillas normally I store them in a heated bowl with a lid. They become a bit more pliable than when they come direct off the heat and work well for filling and rolling. Thinking floppy not crispy?

Calling all tortilla afficionados. I need some help please. I am cooking for about 50 people on New Years Eve and have decided to go the taco route. Key to this is being able to prepare the corn tortillas in advance (probably earlier in the day on New Years Eve) and then heat them up quickly and easily in the evening. Any tips about how best to hold and store the tortillas and also on how to heat them up so that they are close to the texture that one would normally want? I will of course experiment a few days before to be sure that I have a winning solution as I cannot afford to disappoint on the day!

That looks great @David Chang. Drool worthy.

Made arancini with black chanterelles and a mozzarella centre last night. Fried rice balls. With added cheese. What's not to like?

That looks just perfect @Basher. Really looking forward to seeing your whole sirloin cook.

Enjoy the journey @Tony8919. As @BOC said, it is all about the fire and you can reduce but can't eliminate variation. I only go wrong when I fail to remember that simple truth.

Have you tried using a pasta roller attached to your kitchen machine @Syzygies? I use the pasta roller that I bought with my Kenwood Chef and it works well but I will admit that the dough I make is not especially stiff. If you haven't tried a kitchen machine version I would be happy to try it out for you on mine if you tell me how you make the dough. And yes, I covet your bigolaro!

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Yum. Do you sieve out the seeds or do you whizz so well that they disappear @tony b