Tutorial: How to Make Tia Virginia's Frijoles, Arroz Y Tortillas

 Tutorial: How to Make Tia Virginia's Frijoles, Arroz Y Tortillas

I was lucky enough to  learn how to make delicious rice, beans and tortillas from my friend's Aunt, Tia Virginia.


Beans
Estimated cook time for this quantity 2.5 hours (smaller quantities will cook faster)

• 2 pounds dried pink beans rinsed well - pink beans cook faster than others, you do not have to soak them, but they would cook faster if you did.
• 16 c water
• ½ c canola oil
• 4 cloves of garlic whole
• 1 ½ tbsp salt 

Place beans in an 8.5 quart pan after rinsing well. Add water, oil, garlic and salt. Start on high heat. Cover pot, when it starts to boil, turn the heat down, you want the beans to keep up with the Jones' (want to keep them bubbling.) It took this quantity about 30 minutes to come to a boil. After about 2 hours, check beans, they will be cooked, but there will be some liquid left, you can take them out and eat as is or mash them up. That's the story of the beans.

Beans on the stove

After cooking but before mashing

Rice

• 5 cloves garlic
• ½ onion - peeled, cut into large chunks
• 1 - 14.5 ounce jar Delmonte sliced tomatoes (You could also used canned)
• 2 c water
• 1 ½ tbsp salt
• 4 c rice
• 1 c oil

16 ounces chicken broth (homemade is best, but you could use canned (low sodium) or bullion cubes. If you use bullion cubes, omit salt in the rest of the recipe otherwise it will be too salty) Place first 5 ingredients in blender (garlic through salt) and pulverize to chop the ingredients up very small.

Heat oil in large sauté pan on the stove until hot. Add rice in order to brown it. Watch carefully and stir it often so that it doesn't burn. After rice is golden brown, pour blender mixture in. Be careful, it will steam and bubble up. Then add chicken broth stir very well. Taste for seasoning. Bring mixture back to a boil, drop heat to a simmer, cover and cook about 30 minutes.

Optional - during the last few minutes you can add some mixed vegetables into the center of the pot, let it finish cooking, and mix them in at the end

Blender mixture

Browning the Rice



Rice during browning process

After adding broth and blender mixture

 
Click here to watch the liquid being added

the rice cooking

finished product

Tortillas

This batch makes approximately 50 tortillas - depending on thickness and size 5 pounds all purpose flour
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp double acting baking powder (Clabber Girl)
1 cup canola oil
5 c water

Put flour in large bowl. Sprinkle baking powder and salt over the top of the flour. Gently mix baking powder and salt into the flour with your fingers. Drizzle oil over the mixture and start to mix in with your hands using a squeezing motion with your fingers. It will start to resemble loose crumbs.

Make a well in the center of the flour and pour some of the water into the middle. Using a circlular motion around the bowl, mix well, using a squeezing motion when you get back towards the middle. Keep mixing and adding more water ad needed. When the flour starts to form a cohesive ball, start kneading the dough ball by folding it over on itself and pressing down.

The dough needs to be a little moist, not totally dry. Pull lumps of dough off, and using your fingers shape it into a ball then start rolling it out, from the center first, then rolling the edges, and turning the tortilla after every roll.

In the meantime you need to heat up skillet (preferably nonstick) on the stove until it is superhot. Place tortilla on hot skillet, when center starts to have bubble blisters, flip over. Use a weight to ensure good contact of the other side of the tortilla with the hot pan. It only takes about 30 seconds to a minute to cook the tortilla if your pan is very hot.


Tia Virginia - our teacher with her perfect tortilla

Make sure its All Purpose Flour

Mixing the salt and baking powder into the flour 
V

Video of it being mixed at this step 

Mixing the oil in

After adding some waterPouring water inVideo

After more mixing and adding water - Video

The dough starts coming together - Video

 

More mixing - Video

Dough BallDoughball video

Close up of dough

Shaping the dough,  Video 

Rolling out the tortillas

Suzette rolling

Learning how to roll

Cooking the tortillas

Tortillas - small batch, approximately 10 tortillas - 1/5 of the original recipe

1 pound all purpose flour
5/8 teaspoon salt
5/8 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 cup water