Masa Will Teach You Everything You Can Do With Tortillas
Welcome to Cookbook of the Week. In this series, I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While searching for a specific recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has its own magic.
When we first dated, I was visiting my boyfriend in his area of Western New York, New Jersey. (This post is not about how confusing the name of this city is.) That’s when I discovered that Western New York is a secret hub for incredible Latin American cuisine.
Every hole in the wall big restaurant we went to was incredible, but what I remember most was a simple corner restaurant on a quiet street. There was no one else there when we walked in, probably because I worked the evening shift at the bakery and worked odd hours. We always received the same order: memelas de pollo.
The cookbook I chose for this week is called Masa . The ingredient of the same name is made from corn that has been treated with alkali and ground into powder. This harina , or flour, when mixed with water makes a simple dough, and this is masa. It’s the basis of countless homemade dishes like memelas, tlayudas, and tamales, and even the inspiration for packaged grocery store foods like eight-packs of taco shells and bags of tortilla “scoops.” Even if you’ve never heard of masa, there’s a good chance you’ve tried a version of it.
A restaurant in western New York may have given me my first experience of eating fresh, handmade memel. A memela is a flat corn tortilla (made from masa dough) that is deep fried and topped with various ingredients such as sauces, meats, and fresh cheese. Every time we ate there, the flatbreads sent me into another world. The corn tortillas were a little thicker around the edges—much different from the commercially produced tacos I’d had before—and one bite told me why. When a disk of masa is fried, it develops a very thin, crumbly crust that is easily broken through, revealing the interior – a thin layer of soft, pillowy flatbread. The flavor is an explosion of roasted corn. The toppings are important, but the main thing is the masa.
Even though I have mapped this place again and again, I cannot remember the name of this magical place. and I’m afraid the pandemic may have led to this. Until I go back and see it with my own eyes, they still play memes in my mind.
A little about the book
Masa provides an in-depth look at this essential ingredient. The entire front section is dedicated to its origins and history, the process of nixtamalization, an exploration of how fresh masa became more accessible, and how to make your own with dry field corn and calcium hydroxide. The author, Jorge Gaviria, is the founder of Masienda , an heirloom corn supplier.
I’ll tell you now: Ordering their masa allows you to experience the flavor benefits of nixtamalized cornmeal without having to cook and fluff the corn husks. Blue and red heirloom varieties of masa harina are a little pricey if you’re just starting out making your own tortillas, but the white corn masa harina I mentioned above is more affordable. If you want, you can also stick to your own methods for making flatbreads and just use the recipes in the book.
A great cookbook for tortilla lovers.
This may seem like a small subset, but there are actually a lot of cornbread fans out there, and they will devour this book. Not only do the recipes produce delicious, edible results, but that’s only the second half: the first half is a detailed account of why you can make amazing dishes with masa harina, what tools you need, and what to pay attention to while cooking. There’s even a whole section on alkalinity control. This is a good example of an author getting hung up on what he loves most.
Pick this book for the person in your life who complains about the quality of tortillas at nearby restaurants or who often gets misty-eyed over her aunt’s huaraches. Get this for yourself if you’ve been chasing the perfect chicken memela from your past.
Recipes You Can Expect
I enjoyed making several recipes from Masa , including pupusas, flautas, and easy fried hard shell tacos. Of course, I didn’t grow up shaping tortillas, I don’t have a tortilla press or a comal, and I won’t hide the fact that my flautas were badly misshapen. But know this: every recipe was fantastic.
The recipes in Masa are easy to read and easy to prepare. It’s really just different ways to shape and cook your masa, but the dishes are inspiringly varied. I love that each recipe starts with the corresponding country of origin. The top will list Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, or even a region or city if the recipe can be tracked. Underneath that is the “format,” whether it’s a “topper,” like a taco, or a “filling,” like a gordita. Next comes the cooking method, which specifies fried, comal, or deep-fried, giving you the option of choosing the right tools or moving on to a different recipe. This is followed by a short note before short paragraphs of instructions.
Luckily, there is a storage section at the end of each recipe. You make all those flavorful and tender tortillas and shells. It would be a shame to throw away the leftovers.
Dish I chose this week
I think my lack of experience in shaping and pressing masa should add a little hope to the nervous tortilla maker. The masa dough itself is incredibly simple: masa harina and warm water. After that, you shape the dough and cook it in different ways. My failure in shaping the dish did lead to success, which is a good sign.
Technically, I made one and a half recipes this week. I say “half” because, as I mentioned, my flauta…well, I don’t know if anyone else would categorize their flat height as qualifying flauta. I ate it and it was great. The magic of my “flat ace” was the flaky, tender and flavorful masa harina. If you have it, you’ll love it no matter what form it takes.
Realizing that maybe I should start with something simpler, I settled on a recipe for Bollos, stuffed masa dumplings native to Venezuela. My masa mixture was really well hydrated, despite my failures elsewhere, so shaping the little dumplings was easy. I decided to keep things simple and stuff them with shredded mozzarella since I had a lot of it on hand. I dropped the blue cheese stuffed blue corn balls into the boiling water and let them cook. Just 10 minutes later I was enjoying warm, fluffy, corn cheese balls with hot sauce.
How to buy
Of course, you can buy Mas’s cookbook online , which is convenient, but if you have the opportunity, I suggest stopping by your regular bookstore. You can also order directly from the Masienda store if you prefer to support their business directly.