Play With Your Food - It's Fun!

I'm a great fan of "finger food." 
Richie is now enjoying making (and eating) Mexican food.  He and Rick Bayless are enjoying Mexico, plate by plate.

I read the recipe for making your own tortillas, quesadillas and sopes and the opportunity to play with the dough seems irresistible. 

Basic Masa
3 cups dry masa harina
2 teas. sea salt
2 cups lukewarm water, plus more as needed
1 T vegetable oil

( It hasn't escaped me that the basic pasta recipe is flour, 1 egg and vegetable oil)

Mix it all together, form it into a ball and then break off pieces to make tortillas for quesadillas or sopes.  If you don't have a tortilla press, you can roll pieces out and hand shape them...or roll out the dough, put a small saucer face down and, using a sharp knife, cut around the saucer for perfectly round tortillas.  Reshape the scraps into a ball and make more tortillas. 

To play with the taste, you can throw in 3 jalapeno chilis, stemmed and seeded, into the blender with a clove of garlic and a bunch of cilantro.  Hit the "Go" button and finely chop everything.  Dump it in the masa mix and blend thoroughly.   Return the masa and seasoning back into a ball and begin using it. 

You might consider taking a handful of dried tomatoes and tossing them in the blender and make yourself some tomato-flavored tortillas.

The addition of the dried tomatoes, chilis, garlic and cilantro ought to  make anything you make from it extra good. 

Go on - play with your food!