The Perfect Tortilla

As I sit on a little orange, wooden stool in the front room of a village adobe home, the aroma of fresh tortilla masa floods my nose.  I hear a steady stream of Spanish and Zapotec, interrupted by the occasional bray of a donkey or sheep.  We had been living in Oaxaca for a while, and a family at our church invited us to their house for dinner, but what we didn’t know was my mom and I were in for a cooking lesson too. 

Three generations reside in this one household, but rather than feeling crowded, the home is alive with excitement and love.  The compound of small houses surrounds a dirt courtyard where my brother plays fútbol with the other children.  Everyone else congregates into the abuela’s house; the men sit at the table and share a joke or two, and the women prepare the delicious meal and call out to the children “Cuidado, niños!”. 

Before I know it, the ladies are calling for my mom and me.  “Ven aca!” The beautiful, wrinkled indigenous ladies motion for my mother and I to join them in the kitchen while my father sits and talk with the men.

Each lady wears a brightly colored apron with their long hair tied back in a French braid with matching ribbons weaving between the tresses of grey and white.  Their smiles are contagious, and before we know it, my mom and I are laughing with them.  Our tortilla making skills are pretty lackluster, so they begin to teach us the art behind the perfect tortilla, all the while giggling at our amateur skills.  We stand together around a large, brown pottery bowl, mixing the ingredients for the masa.  Some corn flour, water, salt, and a little vegetable oil unite to form the base of the tortilla.  But there’s much more to a tortilla than just the ingredients; a precise, step-by-step process must be followed after we roll the masa into one large mass of goodness. 

Once the masa is ready, the ladies lead us to the light blue, metallic press that morphs a fist sized ball of masa into the flat tortilla.  As I press down on the handle of the press I feel a light tough on my elbow.  One of the ladies gently guides my elbow down to the perfect angle then instructs me to let go.  I look down and the ball of masa forms the shape of the tortilla, laying perfectly like a hand-sized pancake in the press.

The next step, we toast them.  My mom and I were under the impression that tortillas must be soft, but the ladies chuckle at our naivety.  Seeing our puzzled expressions, they explained that trick is to make the tortillas just hard enough so that they crisp slightly when you bite down, but not so brittle that they can’t be folded.  This part of the process requires the most skill because the ladies don’t have a stove or oven.  My mom and I follow them outside where they show us how to cook on their open-fire comal, a grey, slightly bowl-shaped concrete griddle.  Though it’s a little more difficult, we learn that this is the best way to cook a tortilla because it saturates the masa with a smoky, fresh taste.  I hear the tortilla crackle as the flames lick their underside before we turn them over, and my mouth begins to water in anticipation.  We each take turns gingerly flipping the tortillas with our hands, making sure not to burn our fingers.  Once each one is sufficiently browned, we stack each tortilla high into a wicker basket and cover them with a white cloth embroidered with red and orange lillies to trap the flavor and warmth.  Once the masa is gone and the tortillas are cooked, the ladies proclaim “Muy bien, güerras! Vamos a comer.”

We bring our tortillas to the table and gather back with the men for the afternoon meal.  Once the meal began, we unwrapped the cloth and the savory aroma flooded into my nose.  I grabbed one and the warmth flooded my entire body.  The rest of the table was abounding with tasajo, cecina, beans, rice, and everything else the family had in their pantries.  The tortillas enveloped every flavor perfectly, and our taste buds awoke with pleasure.  I closed my eyes because I never wanted to forget this moment, these people, these tortillas.  The ladies, seeing my family’s reaction, excitedly proclaimed that my mom and I were ready for marriage now that we could make tortillas, and we gleamed with pride over our delicious handiwork.

This was not my first encounter with tortillas.  In the States, I ate tortillas at restaurants all the time, not thinking twice about it.  Before we had even considered living in Mexico, my family would have taco nights.  But these tortillas were different than those packaged ones we purchased for our family dinners.  These were better.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t anything in the ingredients or cooking that made these tortillas superior, it was the atmosphere around them and what they represented.

Within Mexico, no matter where you go, whether it be Mexico City or a little village outside of Oaxaca, there will always be tortillas in the middle of the table.  They’re one of the staples keeping the Mexican culture united.  No matter where you’re from, your class in society, or your family, everyone eats tortillas.  There’s a saying in Mexico, “No se puede casar hasta que aprendas hacer tortillas”.   This translates to “You can’t get married until you learn to make tortillas”, meaning that girls are not suitable wives until they can make a good tortilla.  Tortillas permeate every facet of Mexican culture, from the food to the family values to the international relationships.

Almost every Mexican food is made with or utilizes tortillas.  You can stuff them with meat and call it a taco or you can dip them in soup simply to give your mouth some extra texture.  Either way, they’re present, and they can turn any food into something “Mexican”.

I once was at a youth camp with my church in Oaxaca.  One of our camp dinners was Spaghetti, and each table had a basket of fresh tortillas in the middle because it isn’t a true meal without the tortillas.  All of a sudden Spaghetti wasn’t an Italian food anymore; it was Mexican, just with the addition of a few tortillas.

When I came to the U.S. for college, one of my greatest culture shocks was the lack of tortillas.  When my friends and I ate meals together, I always brought a pack of tortillas because that was what I was accustomed to, and I quickly realized that this custom was uniquely Mexican.  I stopped bringing tortillas to every meal, and now I miss them.  Not only because they are delicious, but because they represent community and family.    

Tortillas represent the family values in Mexican culture.  During meals, Mexicans tend to eat for a while, maybe even up to a few hours.  They’re in no rush to get anywhere, and they take their time in meals to get in some good conversation.  They take the time to get to know one another, and meal times are the perfect time for this.  The tortillas sit at the middle of the table so that everyone has to share, and the whole household comes together to take out of the same tortilla basket. 

This doesn’t just mean related family.  In high school, I ate at a friend’s house for dinner, and construction workers were building a new addition to their porch.  When meal time came, my friend’s mother gathered everyone at the table, including the construction workers so that we all ate together.  This is typical in Mexico.  No one is excluded from family meal times; everyone is welcome to share their tortillas. 

Mexicans love sharing their culture with the world around them.  If you asked people about some of the main facets of Mexican culture, most would most likely mention tortillas.  That is because, even in the States, Mexican culture is becoming increasingly familiar, and with that means tortillas are becoming a staple in our food.  The church family that taught my mom and I to make tortillas were thrilled to do so because they love bringing others into their culture.  When friends would come visit us, one thing we almost always did was get some local friends to help us make tortillas, and both parties loved it.  The Mexicans always got a good laugh at the Güerros trying to make something from scratch, but they never turned us away.  They value their culture more than anything else, and they want the world to see its beauty too.

I can see how the American culture has something similar to the Mexican tortilla.  Like Mexicans, we bond over food and meals.  Instead of sharing tortillas, we substitute something like bread, maybe rolls or a loaf of bread in the middle of the table.  But while our eating habits may be similar, what we are missing is the value of community. 

When I moved back to the U.S., I was shocked by how rushed everything was.  Everyone was always worried about where we have to be next rather than where we are in the present.  Our lives are consumed with business and we forget to slow down and simply enjoy life.  It does our society a great disservice when we stop investing in the present. 

In that moment, sitting at the dinner table with that village family, life was good.  The laughter was true, and two cultures bonded over something as simple as a homemade tortilla.  That family has become much more than our friends, they are our family.  We learned something that day that most Americans should realize at some point: Every now and again, we should take some advice from the Mexican culture and just slow down and enjoy a few good tortillas.