Home made tortillas with Masa Harina

I have never been to Mexico, so these tortillas might not be "atuthentic" Mexican style, but they are damn good anyways! I read online that tortillas are made with Masa Harina. Before February I had never even heard of that stuff. Masa Harina is a special corn flour traditionally used in mexican cooking.

Now for some unexplainable reason all store bought ready tortillas in Finland are made with wheat flour. Even those that say "Corn Tortillas". Which of course makes perfect sense. (Not!) With the exception of Patrona, all Tex Mex/ Mexican restaurants in Helsinki serve wheat tortillas.

I also read online that Masa Harina can be found in eco stores, or online. My first choice was Aitokauppa, however they had never even heard of Masa Harina.

Finally I found Cool Chile Masa Harina flour from Ruohonjuuri in Kamppi. There's two ways of making the tortillas. One is easier, the other tastes better (of course!). The easy way is to use hot water, in order to process the dough it needs to be warm. However the tastier way is a recipe below.

Recipe

5,5 dl  Masa Harina
2 dl Bulgarian yoghurt

1,5 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
1,5 tsp baking powder

1.  Mix all ingredients together and start working the dough. You can't use a food processor because the key here is the heat from your hands. Work the dough for at least 10min, the longer the better. 
2. Divide the dough into pieces (this recipe makes about 6 larger tortillas or 12smaller)
3. Keep working each piece with your hands until it feels clay like and elastic.
4. Put the piece on to a baking sheet and spread it out. It is usually easiest to put it in between two pieces of baking sheet and use a roller/or hands.

 Heat up a pan and put one tortilla at a time in the pan. Don't remove the baking sheet.

Flip the tortilla over after about 3-4min, and then flip it once more 3-4min later. Then the tortilla will start to puff up.

 Keep tortillas heated by wrapping them in a warm, moist towel. For filling you can put whatever you like! Below are some tips.

Corn

Chicken with Taco Spice, red and yellow peppers

Chopped Cucumber salad with spring onions and a splash of lime juice

Salsa

 I also love guacamole! A great guacamole recipe is below, the same I used for my Superbowl Nachos'.  For this version of guacamole, I also added some chopped cilantro.

Guacamole

2 Ripe avocado's

1 garlic clove

1/2 lime

Tacombi

One beautiful summer day in NYC my friend from Stockholm came to visit. In Soho she felt like having fish tacos, and knew just the place. Just that place happened to not exist anymore. Wandering the streets of Soho, we asked some local bartenders where to get good fish tacos. They told us the place to go is Tacombi. Difficult to find, and only locals know about it. Sounded perfect.

The place was difficult to find, it is litterary a hole in the white wall on Elisabeth street as you approach the corner of Houston. Easy to miss. Technically it's not Soho, it's Nolita, but same general area.

The most stunnig feature of the place is that inside the restaurant there's a old Wolksvagen van. This van is used as the Taco kitchen.

This place has the best home made chips, and home made guacamole I have ever tasted. No doubt about it. The tacos are fairly small, so I would order two for lunch, three for dinner. Also the great thing about this place, is all tacos, and chips are 100% corn. That means gluten free!  Depending on the server, they recommend different tacos. My favorite was by far the Veracruzana fish taco, and Shrimp a la diabla.

Another seriously cool thing about this place, is that there is no coca cola, sprite, or any other non-mexican soda. The guys here make their own Horchata and Aqua de Dìa daily. I fell in love with their Horchata. I also fell in love with the servers, the owner, everyone and everything about this place, including the food. It became my go-to place.

Prices are low, any lunch will be around $10. Taco's are $3-$4 each, sodas $1,5. The good thing about this place is you set your own price range. If you have more tacos, it's more expensive. You can just have a snack for $4 if you like.