Tortillas and Chili

Last night we had a chili night and invited a local family to our house.  Their son, Cesar had been nice enough (granted he was drunk at the time) to invite us over to his house for his mother’s home made onion soup…..Escabeche ( SS-cab-e-che) with fried chicken.  It was unlike any onion soup I had ever had before and was very good.  At the time I said to them that we needed to have them over for Chili some night and they gave me a funny look.. I found out later that Chili to them meant the Chili pepper, like a seasoning and it didn’t occur to me that they never had thought of Chili con carne at all as a dish but as a seasoned meat.  (chili pepper with meat is the loose translation).

So we had invited the whole family over for dinner.  The family consists of Sarafina, Mario (parents) Cesar and his wife, Samuel and his wife, Sandra and her daughter, the daughter of Cesar, Julissa and then Sonria the daughter of Samuel….10 in total but Mario goes to bed early so he didn’t come and the youngest son that lives with him works at the sugar cane factory nights didn’t come either.  They all live in one house even though Cesar has his own house he wants to live near his Momma and that’s how these people are….. in total there was 12 at the table and we had Chili and salad (they loved my salad)

In the course of the night we were talking and I told them I wanted to know how to make the corn tortillas from scratch.   They had invited CJ to a birthday party the next day for Julissa who is turning 6 today and the mother, Sarafina told me if I came at 10 the next day she would teach me how to make corn tortillas.  Now, Sarafina is Mayan and does things the old Mayan way.  She cooks her rice and beans on a fire outside and the chicken is done the old Mayan way as well.  She is teaching all her daughter in laws (3 of them I think) how to cook and it was funny because the whole family gathered around to see if the Gringo could make a tortilla.  She explained that they had made the maize the day before,  that I could see it being done another time.  They take the corn and boil it in something she called Gata,  I think it was corn starch.  It must boil to a certain point, if it boils too long or has too much corn starch it will be almost a sour smell to it and be very yellow, you really want a more white maize.  After you boil the corn you grind it. They used to use a mortar and pestle type of method with a very round rock and an elongated stone bowl but the Chinese have brought them grinders and instead of using the old stone in the fire they now have a pan that they use that is flat.  The product that the Chinese sell here is something you would probably never see in the states, they would be allowed to sell their stuff because it’s too full of lead!

After the corn is ground it becomes doughy and is almost pasty.  You then roll it up into a ball and using plastic there are two methods to form the tortillas, the first by hand the old Mayan way, the other with the “Chinese” press.  The ones by hand are better but time consuming or as Sandra, the daughter puts it :  Mas facil.   More easier….  The shaping of the tortilla is an art and it must be practiced to learn the perfection of it.  The funny thing is that Sarafina is the mother and the chief cook.  She runs her kitchen tightly and has all the daughter in laws and the daughter doing exactly as she tells them to and they are all cooking different things at the same time but she is putting the whole thing together in the end so it becomes a fiesta.   I am now one of her students.  I feel like I was there on a tolerance test and I wasn't found wanting.  Although my tortillas look like something the kids made they are edible and we will see how well I do when Sandra comes to my house in a week or so to make beans.

In the interim I feel as though I have passed a major mark in acceptance. It is hard because they are really united family groups in this town and to be accepted is “mas deficil”  very difficult.  Have you ever wanted to be accepted by a group and knew that since you were the outsider you needed to pass the test?   How did you feel when you finally felt like you had made a step in the right direction?