photos by Styrous®
If you saw the movie, Ratatouille, you will totally understand this article; if you haven't, there's a link below to the episode referenced on YouTube.
I was having dinner at the house of my friends, Regan and Susana, a couple of weeks ago when I had one of the joyous moments of my life. Susana is from Madrid and one of the sensational cooks I have had the fortune to know. She decided to make tortillas for dinner; she had never made them before.
The tortillas accompanied a Caldo de Mariscos and other dishes; when I took a bite of a tortilla I was instantly propelled back 70 years to the the late forties into the kitchen in the flat my family lived in on Guy Place, south of the slot in San Francisco. I could clearly hear the sound of my great-grandmother plopping and patting the balls of masa harina in the palms of her hands back and forth, slowly flattening the balls, forming the discs that would become tortillas (YouTube link below).
I recalled the aroma of the pot that lived on the stove and was replenished with the left over food from previous meals to provide more meals; the smokey scent of the stove the pot was on that burned wood rather than gas for cooking; the stove had a flat, round iron plate on which the tortillas were cooked, it was removed with a special tool.
I remembered the man who came every week with a leather cape on his back to keep the cold of the huge block of ice, which he held with an enormous pair of tongs, from harming his back. The ice was for our ice box (it was pre-fridge days).
All these images and aromas rushed through my mind in one millionth of a second before I snapped back to the present moment just as the Critic experienced in Ratatouille.
When I returned to reality I remembered that most of my life I called her Abuelita and thought that was her name until I was in my fifties when Susana told me abuelita was Spanish for "little grandmother." Her name was actually, Leonza; I thought Abuelita was her middle name.
I recalled the aroma of the pot that lived on the stove and was replenished with the left over food from previous meals to provide more meals; the smokey scent of the stove the pot was on that burned wood rather than gas for cooking; the stove had a flat, round iron plate on which the tortillas were cooked, it was removed with a special tool.
iron plate remover tools
I remembered the man who came every week with a leather cape on his back to keep the cold of the huge block of ice, which he held with an enormous pair of tongs, from harming his back. The ice was for our ice box (it was pre-fridge days).
ice block tongs
All these images and aromas rushed through my mind in one millionth of a second before I snapped back to the present moment just as the Critic experienced in Ratatouille.
When I returned to reality I remembered that most of my life I called her Abuelita and thought that was her name until I was in my fifties when Susana told me abuelita was Spanish for "little grandmother." Her name was actually, Leonza; I thought Abuelita was her middle name.
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Susana's dinner was as spectacular as it ususally is when she cooks. She made Basque goat cheese croquetas served with spinich and olives . . . .
. . . a beautiful salad . . .
YouTube links:
Ratatouille ~ Anton Ego (The Critic ) (57 seconds)
Making corn tortillas by hand (1 min., 11 seconds)
Oh, the tortillas were as spectacular as in my memory!
Styrous® ~ Thursday, February 15, 2018
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