A foray south of the border

I always wanted to make fresh corn tortillas, but I could never find the right flour in my neighborhood. You can't use ordinary corn meal--you need special lime-treated corn. (I once looked at a Mexican cookbook by Diana Kennedy, and she had you making your own flour by treating the corn with lime from the garden center. Maybe Martha Stewart would try that, but I passed.)

Then just this week I was surprised to find MaSeCa for sale at my corner bodega.




















Maybe there is a tamales god--or a burgeoning Mexican population on the Upper West Side. Now, on with our test.

The recipe is suprisingly easy: just mix the flour, water and some salt. Roll into small balls and press with a tortilla press. Well, I didn't have a tortilla press. I bought one at a yard sale years ago just in case I found that flour--but darned if I could find it now. So I just rolled out the dough on the countertop. The tortillas are not very even, but so what. Then you just grill them for a couple of minutes on a griddle or cast-iron pan.



















These may not look beautiful, but they tasted great, and best of all they had the soft texture I remembered from tortillas I had in Mexico. You can fold them around the food without their breaking apart like those hard, rubbery store-bought kind. You can make sopes with the same masa--just roll them smaller and thicker.

Borscht Belt Routine

It's a really cold day out here (23 degrees), so I am making a big pot of Russian Borscht. Yum! This is a time-tested Times recipe, folks. It's from the Craig Claiborne NYT cookbook of 30-odd years ago, and I've been making it every winter for about that long. The bottom photo is what it looks like before the cabbage cooks down and the beets infuse it all with a lovely magenta color.

They used to serve something like this at the old Russian Tea Room, and I adapted this recipe to satisfy my craving for that version. (This is probably an atavistic craving for whatever my ancestors made when they lived in Minsk or Pinsk.) I add lots of dill, and I make it with prepared beef broth instead of meat. I don't shred the vegetables--I cut them in large julienne. I've made a double batch--it freezes very well. Below, how it looks when it cooks down more.

I hate the I Hate to Cook Book

There's nothing like inedible food to make you stick to your diet. I tried making this chicken dish last night, because I had had something like this once at someone's house, and it was good. Well, this was bad. (I used chicken cutlets rather than chicken pieces, but I don't think that was the problem.) Against my better judgment, I followed the recipe's advice to quarter the mushrooms instead of slicing them thin, and they had a disgusting texture. And that's just one problem. I ended up discarding a lot of chicken and sauce.