cook: homemade tortillas for brisket tacos

I love the breakfast tacos at Aptos St BBQ, and I had leftover brisket and pickled jalapenos and an unwillingness to run to the store to buy just flour tortillas. But I did save to my camera roll this recipe for homemade flour tortillas.

 

It was a pretty easy recipe though I wasn't sure if I got the mixture crumbly or sandy enough.

And maybe I should have kneaded the dough a bit more to be smoother. I chopped up the brisket and folded it in more hickory barbecue sauce and Valentina hot sauce.

 

I do have a large cast iron pizza pan that could have worked as a comal, but I opted instead to use my medium cast iron and got it ripping hot. I used a rolling pin and floured my counter in order to make the tortillas as thin as I could. The first tortilla, thank goodness, bubbled.

I think though I would have liked more bubbles and maybe a more hydrated dough, and so I started adding butter to the cooking tortillas in order to melt and make them more toothsome.

Not bad. I did halve the recipe to make 6 tortillas rather than 12.

Since we were eating brisket tacos for dinner instead of breakfast, I omitted the fried egg and opted to melt cheese before adding the brisket. And I added besides the pickled jalapenos, pickled radish as well as chopped red onion and cilantro. 

   

Hubs wanted cheddar while I wanted melted pepper jack. 

A runny fried egg would have been delicious, but I liked all the vegetables I added to a Mexican American taco dinner.

clay: pottery (birthday) party

On my actual birthday, I wanted to host a small group of family and friends in the community ceramics studio and teach them to hand build a mug.                                  

I liked that my brother who is in the trades, used the brick wall texture. His granddaughter (i.e., my grandniece) elicited an awww! when she said she wanted to inscribe something inspirational on her cup. I under glazed it in cerise pink and plan to use an underglaze black pen to draw a princess crown on her cup after it's bisque fired.

The other grandniece adhered something on her cup, which to me looks like a heart or a bunny head. I plan to draw a bunny face. And I love that my 90-something-year-old mother-in-law put the texture of waves and chose a glaze that will enhance that.

 

This abstract texture and leaf texture likewise will look great too.

I'll have to remember to tell my party guests that their mugs will be microwave- and dishwasher-safe.

I did suggest to a couple of the makers that I was going to add a another glaze. For example, Michaela said she wanted her daughter's pencil cup to be evocative of the ocean though she impressed a texture of leaves, and so I'll use a blue celadon and green glaze. Nicole's bird, I think will adhere Sky celadon too.

clay: celadon fern impressed mug

Clay Body: Bmix with Speckles

Glazes: New Celadon + Juicy Fruit (very runny and therefore a tiny rim dip); black underglaze in fern pressings

Method/Firing: Handbuilt & Ferns Pressing/Glaze pour and dip/Cone 6 

In addition to the top photo, the two photos below show the 3 different little ferns which I pressed into the clay before hand building the mug.

And one can see below that the Juicy Fruit runs a bit, and not wanting to ruin a kiln shelf despite all the kiln wash, I used very little.

 

I showed the cup to my Barbara, who liked the dark green irregular band at the top, the iron speckles in the clay and the evocation of nature. However, it is rather small. The making was so Zen that I will be hand building more, but bigger.