taco night

this is not an artsy polaroid, just a really bad phone camera shot

it was bound to happen! though i miss asian food, i was born and raised in california and i cannot deny the pull of our bastardized mexican food. i am craving a plate from wahoo's, big ol' bean and who-knows-what-kind-of-cheese burritos from alertos/albertos/alfredos/etc, and of course truck tacos. yesterday i did the unthinkable; i made my own beans and tortillas. never would have guessed i'd be doing this. those two are very easy to come by anywhere in california, so why bother making it from scratch? cheap ingredients + lots of time = happy fun time in the kitchen for mina. and if i can do it, seriously, a baby with flippers for arms can too. not that i'm entertained by the thought of thalidomide babies cooking.

wash some dried beans and leave them hanging out in a lot of water. drain when you remember them the next day, cook an onion in some olive oil til brown, add a few minced cloves of garlic, and after everything gets all smelly just dump in the beans with some fresh water and vegetable bouillon. then pretend to read the danish newspaper for an hour. when the beans got nice and soft inside, i smashed them up. they tasted good from the bouillon so i didn't add any salt. cheap success! not to mention that home-cooked dried beans don't give you massive gas like their canned brethren. :D

the tortillas took much less time, to my disappointment. i used this recipe with mostly spelt flour and topped off with ground flaxseed. well, i was somehow out of white flour so by accident i made it somewhat healthy. mmmm, omega 3s... after letting the dough sit for about an hour i pounced on it, rolled flat, and flipped. they turned out pretty tasty but even better after being made into a sad quesadilla-taco mutant in a 250°C oven for about 8 minutes. i spread my bean mash and cottage cheese over half my tortilla and folded it over. cottage cheese?! if i was too lazy to go out and get proper flour, would i really go the extra mile/kroner to get cheddar or colby jack? do they even have colby jack here? anyway it melted okay and i piled on a good amount of (regretfully) canned corn and half-assed salsa i made earlier. and of course the mandatory streaks of tabasco, though i would have swapped for tapatio in a heartbeat. the dane was intrigued by this tortilla business*, substituting melty mozzarella for my pitiful cottage cheese and stuffed his face.

unfortunately my camera had completely died at that point. at first i noticed some lines going through all the photos but now it's just a blank image. all the menu options are there but it's not imaging a damn thing. weird.

i was pretty happy with the result but if i could find some masa harina or even just plain corn flour, that would make my day. haven't seen any corn tortillas in copenhagen, period. ):

*sadly i hadn't taken the dane for any mexican food when he visited orange county. my bad.