Pictures

A note: I've decided to try the new blogging platform Storylane. The story that follows can also be found there. Click HERE to reach it.

My family, 1963

 

    This is a story about beginnings, which is why it is set in the past.

    The summer of 2002 was not unfolding well: my country was at war, its leaders beating the drums to start a second one by telling bigger and bigger lies; from my home in New Jersey, the wounds of 9/11 still felt raw - there was candle wax piled deep on a pier in Hoboken, where memorial flames had burned for months -  and the skyline across the river held a gaping hole; I’d learned my father was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease; my hobby - caring for an heirloom vegetable farm -had expanded into a gigantic obligation; I’d lost the muse for my creative love of decades, photography.

    Every morning, however, I reached out in what seemed a positive gesture: sitting at the laptop to write. The younger me had wanted to be a writer. When a camera had been thrust into my teenaged hands I put words aside. But now the earlier infatuation was back.

    My project was a novel. I’d been writing and re-drafting it for more than two years. I had no idea how good it was - or even if it was good at all - but its first chapter had got me accepted to a Big Deal writer’s conference, and I hoped to give enough polish to the work so that my workshop leader - a Very Big Name - would thrust me onto the literary stage.

    There was quite a bit to be got through before that moment, however - pages and pages of words. To say nothing of the rows and rows of tomato plants, Asian melons, Indian beans, fingerling potatoes and flowering sunchokes needing weeding, fertilizing and insecticide-ing. Or my father’s maddening obsessions. Or the deepening strain in my mother’s voice.

    Sometime in June I got a call. Dad’s doctor had convinced him to get a hernia repaired (or perhaps it was the other way around). Mom had decided to compress their medical needs, and scheduled herself for pain-reduction spinal nerve blocks. Could I come to Ohio and care for them? Just one week. Her procedure was scheduled for Monday, Dad’s for Thursday. Fine I agreed, though my inner self seethed with resentment. They wouldn’t need to interrupt my life if they’d agree to bring help into the house. They surely could afford it. But Dad was too paranoid, and Mom too proud.

    It was on that trip to Ohio I confessed to my wife that things had gone wonky in my guts. I’d been suffering with diarrhea since late May. Recently, every time I ate, my abdomen was wrenched with pain. Plus I was losing weight. Yes I was going to see my doctor - just as soon as this Summer Of Obligations was over.

    In my parents’ home, everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Dad was hallucinating crowds of visitors in the living room and Mom’s skeletal pain was so severe she could no longer stand at the stove and prepare an entire meal. The thing they should be doing - trying to find a facility to move too - was The Great Ignored.

    Mom’s procedure went smoothly, although she was incapacitated for two days afterward. My wife and I performed kitchen duties, kept Dad within sight, and helped Mom in and out of the loo. It was thunderstorm season in Ohio and the lightning was ferocious. Between storms, Dad’s nocturnal wandering, and Mom’s occasional calls for help, Leslie and I slept little. My stomach worsened.

    Then it was Dad’s turn. Whoever thought that surgery on a 90-year-old man in deep dementia was a good idea? We got Dad in and out of the hospital OK - no overnight stay being required - but he couldn’t understand the post-operative pain, and was determined to get up and walk around even though potent analgesics made his gait a wobbling shamble. Worse - though we didn’t know it at the time - his surgeon had insisted he drink eight glasses of water daily. Constipation is a real concern following abdominal surgery, and all that water would help prevent it. Or at least that’s what the surgeon said.

    My job was to assure that every one of Dad’s movements ended in a safe return to bed. Since he mostly slept during the day, that meant getting up in the night to shepherd him in and out of the bathroom. I also had to keep him from going down the stairs to the basement or out to the garden.

    It was an exhausting occupation. I resented and objected to it, but kept a nice face because I knew Mom was not yet recovered. Besides, her procedure had not been successful. She was in pain, and an open display of anger wouldn’t do anything for her. To ameliorate my feelings I cleaned house. This served two functions: to organize possessions for the inevitable - even Mom could see they’d have to move soon - and to find objects from my childhood.

Me, 6th grade.

     Chief among those mementos were photographs. There were dozens of albums, some dating to the 1920’s. I found photos of Dad as a young farmer. There was Mom, shooting archery. There was I, draped in a gigantic bib, face smeared with chocolate.

    It was remarkable how many pictures of me included food. Not just me eating, but me whirling an egg beater, rolling pie dough, cutting cookies. I didn’t remember doing those things, but I did recall being a teenager and baking pizza, sometimes for the whole neighborhood.

    More remarkable than the pictures was how they made me feel: damned good. Despite the fact that in present time everything I ate seemed to hurt, and life was a continual round of toilet visits and me curling into a pained ball on the bedroom floor, I loved food. Or at least I loved making food. More than anything, the little voice inside me whispered. More than photography. More than writing.

My mother - sometime in the 1930's

    I set aside some of the photos for residency in my house when the time came. Meanwhile, Dad and Mom were on the path to recovery, or so it seemed. My sister and her daughter arrived to take over, and Leslie and I left for New Jersey.

    We’d got halfway across Pennsylvania when my cell rang. It was my niece, Brianna: “Pop-pop’s gone crazy!” she howled. “He just turned his plate upside down and is throwing food!”

    I could hear clatter in the background. My heart skipped a beat. Leslie interrupted on speaker: “You know what to do?” she prompted.

    “Call 911?”
   
    “That’s right. You’re a very smart girl. Do that, and stay out of the way.”

    We clicked the call off. A long moment passed. “I can’t go back,” I finally said.

    “Of course not,” Leslie said. “It’s fine. They can handle it. We have to get home.”

    Indeed we did and indeed they could.

    As it turned out, Dad was suffering from hyponatremia - a dangerous lowering of sodium in the blood. He’d gotten that way from over-hydration (recall those eight glasses of water per day?) 24 hours on IV electrolytes fixed him.

    Madness, I discovered, is but one symptom of hyponatremia. Wobbly gait, irregular heartbeat, poor respiration, paleness and sweating are others. Untreated - or mistaken for dehydration and treated with more water - hyponatremia is fatal.

    Hyponatremia is now recognized as a leading cause of fatalities in marathons. In fact, no marathon fatality has ever been caused by dehydration. Actually, most of the “dangers” assigned to dehydration are now recognized as mythic, and the “benefits” of “good hydration” - bowel regularity, mental clarity, joint smoothness - are now understood to be non-existent.

    It’s too bad that Dad’s doctor hadn’t kept up on hydration research. Some of the facts were circulating in the medical community even then. It was equally too bad that fixing his hyponatremia didn’t cure his Alzheimer’s. But then, nothing does.

    It was also too bad I wasn’t listening to the facts swirling around me. Leslie had been diagnosed with celiac disease when she was 12, and thought that a lot of what I was suffering sounded familiar. But I was sure it was cancer. My one prayer had become: let me publish this novel before I die.

    Fast Forward to October. It’s a cold morning and I’m sitting in the produce stand beside that heirloom vegetable farm, shivering in a down jacket. I’ve lost 15 pounds since June, and despite several diagnostic procedures, have no idea what’s wrong with me, other than it is not cancer.

    The summer that began poorly unfolded worse. A good friend of Leslie’s died. She and I got stuck on opposite sides of the Hudson River during the August blackout. And that Big Wheel writer’s conference was a Big Scam. The superstars spent their time sniffing other superstars and gave us underlings short shrift. My workshop was worthless. Plus I’d been so sick I’d had to skip a third of my classes.

    Luckily I had something to hold onto. On a return trip to Ohio I’d collected some of those family photographs. They were scattered on my desk, and they made me smile. I’d been The Boy Who Baked, and was proud of it. I’d always loved to cook, here was proof. At least if I died soon, as I was certain I would, I had fed my wife well.

    I picked up a book a colleague had loaned me. “Irritable Bowel Syndrome” was the title. I’d been trying to follow the authors’ dietary recommendations. Not that they were doing any good - quite the opposite. And then my eye fell on a chapter heading. One I’d seen a dozen times but ignored. Two words I’d heard hundreds of times but also ignored. Celiac Disease. I flipped to the page.

    There were my symptoms, each and every one. Holy Crap! Maybe I wasn’t going to die after all. If a blood test confirmed it, I had C.D. No problem, not for a man who loves to cook. What, I wondered, could I cook and eat right now?

    Everyone I’ve ever met who has Celiac Disease remembers their first gluten-free meal. For me, it was a thick burger grilled over charcoal, a half-dozen slices of German Green and Cherokee Red tomatoes, a dollop of cottage cheese with fresh basil. Salt and mustard and pepper and no bread. And Oh My God nothing happened. No pain. No rush to the throne. Nothing.

    As I washed the dishes and tidied the kitchen I sensed that major changes lay ahead. I would close the produce stand in two weeks, I would contact my doctor and ask for the necessary blood test, I’d start a gluten-free diet. Maybe I’d recover the strength to re-draft the novel.

    There was no way of knowing what really lay ahead: my parents’ removal to assisted living, a bewildering array of negative writing experiences, my learning that gluten-free breads were terrible, my sense that I could do better, the years of research, my abandonment of a teaching career, the opening of my gluten-free dry blend business. I could see, however, that a talisman guided me. Sitting on my desk, the beacon from the past. Pictures. Of me. Making food. It was a destiny I hadn’t known I had. But was ecstatic to embrace.

Happy Days

Finally the day has arrived! With blessings from the State of New Jersey, I began producing dry flour blend last week. It now is just a matter of days until I have enough inventory to start selling and shipping.

  Standing at my stainless steel prep table and bopping to old Gretchen Wilson tunes, I’m happier than I’ve been at work for years. Everything about the moment reminds me of the time immediately after graduate school, when I worked 12 hours a day in the darkroom. Now, as then, I’m on a trajectory of converting discoveries into tangibles. The difference being that everyone can consume today’s tangibles. They’re not just designed for art collectors. 

It is immensely gratifying to embrace the work that’s taken a lifetime to discover. While it would be tempting to regret the years doing other things, it would also be a mistake. Everything counts: the botany my mother taught me, my father’s political analyses, the science I studied in high school and thought I’d pursue as a career until math beat me up, the ways I messed up as an undergraduate, the art I made, the art career at which I did not succeed, the years of teaching, the celiac disease that laid me low.

Sometimes my body wishes I’d reached this work sooner. Lifting an 88-pound sack of flour or crawling hands-and-knees on a concrete floor to vacuum up debris truly is better work for 20-somethings. But I’m proud to still be able to do it, even if it hurts the next day. I guess it’s safe to say that a life of adventure sports also counts. Being able to climb 5.9, skate pre-bronze, and tele-ski double diamonds, while not stupendous accomplishments, have left me with the strength and agility to bounce back from most insults.

But the purpose of today’s posting is not to brag; it’s to celebrate and acknowledge. A point has been reached in a cycle, and the next spin of the wheel is bound to be interesting. 

 I must say I did not get here alone. I truly am standing on the backs of others, from my government - which created the roads I travel on, the sewers and water supply I need, and the tax structures and food regulations which keep me and my consumers safe - to the consultants, partners and friends who’ve supported and advised and helped so much. My wife Leslie Bryan deserves special praise. It was her suggestion that I “Do something with that baking talent after you retire” that got me on this track. Her constant encouragement in the kitchen and at the dining table keeps me going. My friend Paul Sadowski also deserves praise. Paul suggested I make a bake-at-home product, which prompted me to develop the bread-in-a-bag technology I use today.

I know I’ll miss some deserving names, but I have to do this. Public thanks extend to my business partner TJ Fontenette and his wife Vanette. Their insight and acumen were crucial to the launch of this project. Their children are my biggest fans, too. Jan Kahn of Godiva Chocolates contributed terrific early advice, as did retired baker Frank Kitchens. Although she does not know it, cookbook author and GF guru Annalise Roberts contributed hugely. So did the late Bette Hagman. Same goes for Dee of Dee’s One Smart Cookies; chef Rebecca Riley; bread-maker and sourdough advocate Sharon Kane; great friends Betsy and Gary Ford; in-laws Bob and Ann Bryan (a BIG special Thank You for your extreme generosity); chef Arlene Jacobs; author Eugenia Bone; logo designer Andrea Rinaldi; packaging designer Anna Ocón Beltrán; all my honest (and some dishonest!) taste-testers; friends who put up with early versions of “bread”; you my gentle readers; and the dozens of email responders, scientific article-writers, librarians, bakers, telephone-answerers and bookstore clerks who put up with the slightly crazed researcher who is me. 

Dessert = Gut. 

Alas I’m not posting any recipes today. It’s not that I’m too busy to make dessert (that would be inexcusable!), it’s just that I want to get this News and Thank-You out. And, maybe, take a little breather from dessert: I had a friend over for dinner the other night and between us we polished off a dozen micro-pies. Translation: I need to spend an hour this afternoon in the pool, not with a rolling pin. Stay tuned, however - I want to make some deconstructed things. Apples are flooding the markets, and this also is the season for hot chocolate. I’m thinking upside-down apple pie (crust-filled apples in a bowl), and cookies made with cocoa instead of flour and “chunked” with pieces of puff-pastry. All in small sizes for families like mine.

See you next post - and don’t forget to check my website and sign up for my newsletter.

Progress and Pie

Today's puzzle - what the $#@!! is going on here??? (see below)

At the present moment, writing about my business is rather like reporting the function of a healthy immune system. Things are humming along, with all the organs in the background doing their jobs. A comforting picture, but boring.

The town of Berkeley Heights New Jersey has my building permit application. My plumber is waiting in the wings, as are my equipment and raw materials suppliers. My packaging designer is on her third draft, my business partner is reviewing the packaging copy, and I’m waiting for several vendors to call me with estimates. I have finished one thing: a short promotional video, embedded here: 

So, clever music and a pretty actress (that’s my wife, Leslie) aside, there’s not much of interest going on with my business, gentle readers. So I’m going to write about pie.

Pic crust tools and ingredients chilling in the 'fridge

For the past year or so I’ve been chiding Gary Lincoff, author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, whenever he posts a pie photograph on his Facebook page. “You need to make a gluten-free version!” I nag. At which I can just about hear a big chunk of his followers saying, “Yuk!”

It’s easy to wince at the concept of gluten-free pie crusts if you’ve never tasted a good one. However, since half the effort of making a wheat flour crust consists of preventing gluten from over-developing, removing gluten from the formula doesn't create much loss.

A scant eighth teaspoon of Xanthan gum - crucial ingredient for GF crust

I’ve been rolling pie crusts since I was 4 or 5. Which is not to say I’m any kind of baking expert; I’m not. I do love pie, however, and am quick to judge crust quality. (Point of historical fact: my mother’s relatives, the Mallery family, used to have reunions every August. There was silent but intense competition among the women as to who made the best pie. Which was emphatically not about the filling, but the crust.) So when I say I’ve got a good gluten-free crust formula, please take me seriously.

Half a stick of butter (4 tablespoons)

Although I’ve blogged about pies before, it’s time to write a very specific recipe if for no other reason that Mr. Lincoff has come out with a new book, The Joy of Foraging. He’s so good at finding wild edibles there’s sure to be Facebook posts all summer regarding pies made with found fruits. I’m thinking that people like me (ie - celiac sufferers) deserve to enjoy what nature offers in final, sugar-drenched, baked form too. So here goes.

Flour

A great deal of what happens in the ideal pie crust has to do with how the ingredients are handled. Therefore, the type of flour is not totally critical. That said, I believe two things are important about flour: it needs to be Easy, and it needs to taste Good.

Unfortunately there is no single gluten-free grain flour that will make great piecrust. All GF flours are blends - grain flour + starch flour + dough enhancers/gluten substitutes. You can buy pre-mixed flours, and that’s great, but in my house there’s so many flours I can make special blends for different types of pies (more on that, below). The one thing all my blends have in common? They’re based on a simple formula: Bette Hagman’s Featherlite blend.

The late Ms. Hagman came up with this mixture decades ago. In my opinion it can’t be beat for sweets, although I sometimes modify it. The recipe: 1 cup white rice flour, 1 cup corn starch, 1 cup tapioca starch, 1 tablespoon potato flour. 

There’s an easy way to blend these dry ingredients: put them into a big ziplock bag, leave a good amount of air,  zip the bag closed and shake it like mad. Depending on the size of your bag (and your willingness to clean up should the seal fail) you can make rather large quantities this way.

Once you’ve got the flour you can focus on handling, the first step to which is, chill everything.

Thin slices of cold butter

A pie crust should be nicely flaky. To accomplish that, unsalted butter is the best shortening. Butter contains water, which, under the right circumstances, changes quickly to steam and lifts surrounding dough. As this is going on the butter melts, coating the flour grains. In combination with the naturally occurring sugars in the grains, the fat-soaked flour turns crispy. 

That’s a lot to happen all at once - or at least in fast sequence - so to make all the pieces play together it’s critical to prep them. Which is where temperature comes in. You’ll want the butter to be flat sheets, thin enough to melt fast but thick enough to perform lift. And, you’ll want the butter to be solid until the instant the crust hits the oven. That’s what keeps the most water in the butter and makes the tastiest flakes. Therefore, you want the butter to be cold throughout the crust-making process.

I keep butter, flour, dough enhancers, a wooden work surface, a bench knife and a thick ceramic mixing bowl in the refrigerator, waiting for fresh fruit. Once a harvest comes in I figure out how much pie Leslie and I can eat, and get working. (BTW - that photo at the top of the page? When I make crust on a hot day I chill the rolling board further with whatever is in the top of my freezer.)

Preparation

Ready to be chopped and ground

Making pie crust is yet another example of the superiority of weighing, rather than dry measuring, ingredients. Keep in mind that digital kitchen scales are now quite cheap. I see them in pharmacies for $10.

The basic weight ratio of pie crust ingredients is: 3 parts flour, 2 parts shortening, 1 part ice water.  Experience tells me I can make a quarter-sheet of mini-pies  - enough to last about a week in my household - with a crust recipe founded on 1/2 stick of butter. If I reach into the ’fridge and find 1/3 stick or 2/3 or 5/8 stick, it hardly matters. I just weigh the butter; all else follows. If you’re bad at math like me, divide the butter weight in half. That gives you the ice water weight. Multiply the ice water weight by three. That gives you the flour weight.

You can make a decent pie crust using the ingredients above, if you use good technique. However I do some modifications that work wonders. For a half butter stick quantity, I add two teaspoons of rice vinegar to the water (weighing both together), and substitute 1/4 the flour with almond meal, which I make by coarse chopping almonds, then running them through my spice grinder until they threaten to become almond butter. (Admittedly it is easier to buy almond flour, which is available at many grocery stores.) The flour should also get a scant 1/8 tsp xanthan gum, a pinch of salt, and two teaspoons of sugar. 

Butter shavings in cold flour

If I’m making a pumpkin, squash, sweet potato, pecan or “Derby” pie, I use teff flour in my featherlite blend instead of rice flour. Dark teff is earthier and rye-like; ivory teff is spicier and can have notes of fish (try it for a seafood quiche).

Technique

This is the crucial part, and the only kitchen task I try to accomplish at speed. Keeping the ingredients cold is important, and a bit challenging, especially in the summer.

Put the chilled rolling board on your work counter. Drape a couple of layers of plastic wrap - big, generous pieces at least 18” long - over the board. Set the cold bowl and a bench knife on the board. Stick the water + vinegar in the freezer.  Unwrap the butter. Measure flour, sugar, xanthan gum and salt into the bowl, and stir to mix.

The well awaits

Using the cold bench knife, slice the butter across its end into pieces @ 1/16” thick, tossing into the flour as you cut. From time to time stir the flour with your fingertips so that the butter chunks get coated and stay cold. When you have all the butter cut, toss the flour/butter lightly to distribute chunks evenly.

Using just your fingertips, press each piece of butter through the flour and against the side of the bowl to squeeze it into a big flat flake. Toss from time to time. When all or most of the butter is pressed, overturn the bowl onto the plastic sheets. Gather the blend into a mound and form a well in the center. Retrieve the ice water, punch through the thin skin of ice on top, and pour it into the well. 

First fold. Note flakes of butter and oozing water

Toss the flour that forms the “hillsides” down onto the well until the wet dough/water is covered. Pick up one end of the plastic wrap, then fold it onto the other end, enclosing the dough. Press and pound until the mix is 1/2” to 3/4” thick. Unwrap the top layer of plastic, scraping any dough that sticks back onto the dough mass, and use the bench knife to fold the dough into thirds, like a business letter.

At this moment you are probably wondering what kind of madman I am, calling what’s on your work surface “dough”. It’s a dry-on-the-outside, sticky-in-the-middle, water-oozing, semi-rectangular mass. But bear with me.

Third fold. Slowly, the mess becomes dough.

Close up the plastic again and press/pound the dough flat, trying to work the “package” so that when you fold it the next time the folds will be at 90 degrees to the last set. 

Repeat these cover-pound-uncover-fold-re-cover actions 4 to 6 times, until the dough begins to look like dough. Then wrap it up in the plastic and stick it back in the ‘fridge, where it needs to rest 6 or more hours before being rolled.

And that’s really all there is to it - with but one additional thought: When you roll the dough you’ll get better results if your rolling board is chilled and coated with a rubbed-in tablespoon or two of superfine brown rice flour.

Ready for refrigeration. Several hours of rest will allow all the water
to be absorbed and the dough will be ready to roll.

I’m not going to suggest pie fillings. That’s best left to folks like Gary, who seem to have more ideas for wild edibles than I ever will. But I will tell you my absolute favorite: wild huckleberries. I wish I had some right now!

Vacation!

Spring skiing. Stewart Cirque, Toiyabe mountains, Nevada.

I rarely look back on my days as a community college faculty with any fondness, but I’m realizing I learned a very important behavior during my tenure: How to deal with bureaucracy.  Negotiations to sublease a workspace for Luce’s Gluten-Free Artisan Bread are proceeding smoothly - between the leaseholder and me, that is. The red tape, on the other hand .... Well, let’s just call it amusing. (Example: Luce’s was originally formed in Washington state. Our insurance agent there now tells us his company is not licensed to do business in New Jersey. In the meantime, we’d written the lease using the phrase “all risk”, which now it turns out is a Washington phrase and must be replaced with “all peril.”) It’s a good thing I know how to laugh.

The offshoot is, things are taking longer to organize than I’d hoped. (Surprise!) In  the face of this I’m doing what all strong men do coping with regulatory travails. Taking a vacation!

Mount Bachelor, Oregon, in May. Lotsa snow!

This is actually my wife and my long-postponed ski trip to Mount Bachelor in Bend, Oregon. 

To those of you sweating over the spring’s first hot spell and saying, “Huh?!” or mentally referring back to ski trips that were deep powder wallows, I say Don’t knock spring skiing if you haven’t tried it.

Coming at you. Soft corn on Granite Peak, Nevada.

Climbing on tele skis.
East Humboldt Range, Nevada.

My love of sun-warmed corn snow goes back to the ’80’s, shortly after I took up Telemark skiing and realized, thanks to that sport’s boot-binding, which allows easy uphill travel, the whole mountainous world was my oyster. I began climbing up and skiing down New Jersey’s forested hills (scars on my forearm attest to the steepness of the learning curve) and outgrew these slopes just about the time Leslie and I decided to get married. My “Bachelor Party” was a 5 day ski-camping trip - on Mount Baker, Washington in July - led by the North American Telemark Association. Up there, on the slopes of a mountain almost touching the Canadian border, the sun rose at 4 AM and set at 10 PM, the days were 75 F and the snow - tons of it - was soft as kitten fur but fast as rink ice. I was hooked.

Paul (right) and I and our goal. East Humboldt Range, Nevada

However, it wasn’t until I took an avalanche awareness course with a ski buddy Paul, who I met for the first time on that Baker trip, that I grasped the #1 reason to appreciate warm-weather skiing: it’s one helluva lot safer. 

Snow is more stable in the spring. The freeze-thaw process sinters it - reducing unstable layers and gluing the whole mass together while adhering it to the underlying ground. This is not to say that spring snow avalanches are impossible - they do happen and they do kill people - but they are rare.

Paul and I wanted to ski the biggest mountains we could muster. However, since we both lived on the East coast, that meant travel to sites where we had no intimate knowledge of climate and weather. Thus we’d be rolling the dice every time we got on a steep snowpack. Combining this uncertainty with the arch discomfort of winter camping plus the drudgery of climbing through deep snow led us both to opt for spring.

Memorial Day. East Humboldt Range, Nevada. Yes it was cold!

Which is not to say that spring skiing is all Bermuda shorts and suntans. Mountains can be damned cold in May, particularly at night, and the sky can dish out all sorts of ugly weather. I’ve had my share of dodging thunderstorms, shivering despite a down parka and waking up to snow all over the tent. But all in all, when it comes to ski expeditions, spring is the only way to go.

(For those of you wondering, “Hey, where’s the food in this post?”, have faith. There’s a recipe at the end.)

Racing a thunderstorm. Granite Peak, Nevada.

Fast forward to Leslie, who hates being cold but loves the slip and slide of her skis on the white stuff. Our trip won’t be an expedition. I’ve burned her too many times in the back country: a 6 mile trek into Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains in January to spend 4 days in a cold yurt; thrashing through a brush-choked slope in New Jersey; trying to coax her down a 45-degree terror-ledge on Hinckey Summit, Nevada. Etc. 

Instead we’re aiming for the relative comforts of a chairlift and groomed runs. And food. That’s one thing about Bend, Oregon - lots of terrific food.

But first, a picture show:

The endless climb + the morning's tracks. Henry Mountains, Utah.

Me heading downhill. East Humboldt Range, Nevada.

Yet another thunderstorm. East Humboldt Range, Nevada.

Leslie on top of Mount Bachelor, Oregon.

Steep. Stewart Cirque, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.

Lunch run. Hinckey Summit, Nevada.

Now about that food.

We have a ritual in Bend: eat at the brew pubs, eat Mexican, have ice cream every night, try one place new. The Mexican place we enjoy most is called El Caporal. It’s a chain, but that doesn’t stop their camarones el diablo from being excellent. And that doesn’t in any way impede them from having terrific hand-made corn tortillas. Which I know are hand-made because there is a woman sitting in the center of the restaurant slapping them out, hour after tedious hour.

I happen to think that Mexican corn tortillas, properly made, are one of the world’s best breads. The trick of course is making them properly - with the right corn, prepared the right way, by someone who knows what they are doing, with flawless cooking technique. The best tortillas I’ve ever had were not actually at El Caporal, but in a place outside El Paso, Texas called the Little Diner. Supposedly the chef there hand-grinds her corn daily. The results were such a perfect food they made me tear up in ecstasy. Wrapped around pig fat and spices, they are joy beyond joy.

I’m going to be brazen and put my own tortillas somewhere between El Caporal’s and Little Diner’s. Mine are not nearly as well-shaped or consistent, but I’ve cadged a few tricks about corn and process that make them pretty damned tasty. 

First, the corn:

Tortillas can be made with just about any corn. Last winter I did a test, grinding into flour as many varieties as I could find (including popcorn), making tortillas and tasting them with Leslie. We blinded the test against a pre-packaged masa, which is what most restaurants and home cooks use. Compared to the top of the taste mountain, this (commercial masa) ranked a poor 4th. Two varieties tied for first place: blue posole corn from Purcell Mountain Farms, and white mote (hominy) corn from the local supermarket. Given the proximity of this latter, it’s what I use.

A note: I live in a very Hispanic neighborhood, so all the local stores carry mote corn. Ironically it is Peruvian, not Mexican - but it still tastes best. 

To prepare the corn is simple enough - you soak it, then grind in a food processor. However to do this right means advance planning, plus one ingredient that may be hard to come by: Mexican Calc. This is calcium carbonate - lime. It spikes up the flavor while at the same time making nutrients available. You can find it in the Mexican food section of some supermarkets. If you can’t locate it don’t sweat; your tortillas will still be excellent. But if you can obtain some, do; it is cheap and a little goes a long way.

Here’s how to make great tortillas:

Place one cup of dried white mote or blue posole corn in a microwave-safe bowl. Add an equal weight of water (this won’t be a full cup but about 2/3 cup. Use a scale or rig a ruler as a balance beam). Nuke for 2 minutes, or just to boiling. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon calc. Allow to cool. Cover and let stand for 8 to 16 hours.

Using a slotted spoon, remove corn to food processor. Pulse to grind coarsely, then add the soaking water and process continually until smooth - about 2 minutes. You may have to stop the processor and scrape down the interior surfaces from time to time.

Form the dough into a ball. This is the tricky part. It should just hold together enough to allow you to pat it into a pancake shape but not be so moist it sticks easily to plastic. I keep a reserve of commercial masa on hand in case I get the dough too wet, and if it is too dry I wet my hands while dividing the dough into smaller balls (see below). Return dough to bowl and cover. Allow to stand while you heat a dry skillet or sheet of plain metal to @ 500 F. 

Divide the dough into golf-ball-sized balls. Flatten by slapping back and forth between your hands (true Mexican style) or use a tortilla press, flat plate, cutting board or other implement, pressing against your work counter. If you do it this way you’ll want to put the balls of dough between two layers of plastic bag. Get the tortillas about as thick as a banana peel, then slap onto the hot surface and cook @ 1 minute per side, turning only once. Hold in aluminum foil and serve warm.