Blue corn tortillas from the Cool Chile Company

Tortillas don't need to be a blank canvas

So I was browsing the Cool Chile Company's website a few weeks ago and I discovered they are doing blue corn tortillas now!

This is amazing because blue corn, though prized in Mexico, is virtually unknown in the UK.
I recently wrote about my experiences making homemade blue corn tortillas. But I'm aware this is outside the comfort zone for many readers.

So, as with white corn tortillas, it's Cool Chile to the rescue.

I reviewed CCC's white corn tortillas ages ago; they remain the only corn tortillas available in the UK that I endorse.

When I tweeted my excitement about the blue corn, CCC offered to send me some. They arrived while I was on holiday at home, cooking with mi madre.

Just in time to be used for tacos de carnitas, in fact!

My original idea was to use some of the blue tortillas for tacos and turn the rest into tortilla chips ("totopos").

But instead we finished the lot in one night.

"Anyone want another taco?"

"Aye, just one more then."

Until they were gone.

Which should indicate how much we liked them.

They were a bit paler in colour than my homemade blue tortillas. I assume the dough was a mixture of blue and white corn, which would undoubtedly make the dough easier to work with.

I found 100% blue corn dough quite fragile (blue corn is less starchy than white corn). And Cool Chile Company tortillas have to go through el monstruo (their awesome tortilla-machine).

Another advantage of mixing corn varieties is the tortillas can easily stand up to heating, reheating, frying, dipping in chile sauce (enchilar-ing), and all the other things a tortilla has to do.

Also Mrs MexiGeek, who is still a bit unnerved that there is such a thing as blue corn, preferred the mitigated shade of blue.

The bottom line is these are excellent tortillas and a great way to lend a taste of Central Mexico to your cooking.

Blue Corn Tortillas (tortillas azules)

A basket of fresh tortillas azules

If there's one thing I've been dying to make for years, it's blue corn tortillas.

In the UK (and, to be fair, in much of the US), you get one kind of corn: yellow "sweetcorn". But corn, miraculous mother of life that it is, comes in several varieties - and colours - each with their own individual characteristics.

Yellow corn is high in sugar and water, while white corn (the main variety in Mexico) is less sweet and very starchy - which makes it ideal for tortillas and their "relatives" (like sopes, panuchos, etc).

But while white corn is the main variety in Mexico, it is by no means the only one. A fresh, warm white corn tortilla is a beautiful thing, but a blue corn tortilla is a delicacy.

The only place to get blue masa harina (blue corn tortilla "flour") in the UK is from Mexgrocer.

My Mexican Shop in Dublin occasionally stocks it as well.

I ordered a kilo bag of Maseca Azul (an actual Mexican brand, by the way) from Mexgrocer and whipped up a batch of blue corn tortillas.

I had eaten blue corn before, but I had never cooked with it.

However, I found no indication that it had to be treated differently than white corn, so I used my usual recipe for tortillas (adapted from Lupe Pinto's):

• 250 g (blue) masa harina
• 300 ml hand-hot water

My wife thought it looked like sand

Ever since I read Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple I have occasionally added a tablespoon of olive oil to my tortilla dough. It stops the dough drying out and makes it easier to work with.

However, it also imparts a faint olive oil flavour, and I wanted the full-on blue corn experience, so I left it out this time.

Anyway, you mix the masa harina and the water (by hand), knead it for ten minutes, then let it rest at room temp for half an hour.

"It doesn't look like an actual foodstuff" - Mrs MexiGeek

I kept some extra hand-hot water nearby in case the dough dried out too much (which it did; add extra water a spoonful at a time until the consistency comes back to normal).

Then you take a chunk of the dough about the size of a golf ball and either roll it out with a rolling pin between two sheets of plastic or pop it into your tortilla press (which you can also buy from Mexgrocer or Lupe Pinto's), again, between two sheets of plastic.

Either way, you're looking for a thickness of about 2 mm.

Cook the tortillas on a hot dry frying pan for 30 seconds on one side; then flip and cook for 10 seconds; then flip again, press down gently on the tortilla with your spatula, wait for it to puff, and it's done.

Don't worry if it doesn't puff; it will still be delicious.

The first thing I noticed is that, while white corn masa harina has a similar texture to white flour, the blue version is speckled and grainy.

The dough, too, had a grainier texture than white corn dough, and seemed more prone to drying out.

And the uncooked tortillas were more fragile and harder to peel off the plastic sheets in my tortilla press. I even had to reform one or two of them into balls and start again.

But the flavour was well worth it.

Blue corn is sweeter than white corn, though not nearly as sweet as yellow corn. Some people think it has a nutty taste; personally I detect some floral notes.

And to top it off, there's the surreal experience (for most people) of eating a naturally blue food other than blueberries.

Speaking of blue, one thing that took me by surprise was Mrs MexiGeek's reaction to the colour.

She agreed the tortillas were delicious, but found the colour challenging. I guess if you haven't grown up with multicoloured corn, blue tortillas may seem a bit "weird".

My three-year-old daughter, who has fewer preconceived notions about food, absolutely loved the blue tortillas. She had seconds!

Another caveat is that this it's kind of an "advanced corn". I wouldn't make blue corn my introduction to homemade tortillas.

Served with pollo en salsa de cacahuates

If you haven't used "normal" white masa harina before, I'd get a bag of that first.

Make a batch or two of tortillas. Make some tamales. Get used to masa harina as an ingredient. Then, when you feel confident, move on to blue masa.

You'll be amazed at how diverse corn can be.

They make great tortilla chips too!

Pollo en salsa de cacahuates (chicken in peanut sauce)

A peanut-sauce is something most British people associate with Asian cuisine (think of satay, for instance).

But peanuts, like chiles, are a New World crop, and were brought to Asia from Central and South America by Spanish and Portuguese traders.

A sauce like this is equally unfamiliar to Americans, because most Mexican food in the US is based on Northern Mexican cuisine, whereas this sauce seems to be more Central/Southern Mexican.

For example, I got this recipe from Laura, who runs the Meetup group All Things Mexico in London. She was inspired to share it with the group after a visit to her native Veracruz State, where this dish is a local speciality. Diana Kennedy, the Julia Child of Mexican Cuisine, writes of a similar dish in she had in Mexico City.

As soon as I read Laura's recipe, I knew I had to cook this. Apart from being delicious, it's actually quite simple to prepare.

But most importantly it represents an important aspect of Mexican cuisine that doesn't get the attention deserves.

I read once that archaeological evidence suggests that nuts and seeds were what first prompted ancient Mesoamericans to settle in what is now Mexico.

Peanuts were being sold in the markets of Tenochtitlan when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century.

Laura's recipe was:

• 2 chicken breasts

•  150 g peanuts, shelled and skinned (I used salted peanuts and added less salt when seasoning)

• 120 ml cream (I used single cream)

• 1 onion (I used half a large onion)

• 1 chipotle

You can buy dried chipotles from Sainsbury's and sometimes Tesco. Probably the best place to get them is the Cool Chile Company though.

There are also lots of chipotle pastes for sale, but I wouldn't use a bottled chipotle sauce for this dish.

To prepare, put all the ingredients except the chicken into a food predecessor and blend to a smooth sauce. (I ground the peanuts in my molcajete first, because I like to make things harder than they have to be.)

Meanwhile, cook your chicken. I poached mine for about 20 minutes with the rest of the onion, a toasted avocado leaf, and ten black peppercorns.

When your chicken is done, heat some oil in so pan and fry the sauce for a few minutes. It reduces and darkens to a lovely medium brown colour. And it smells delicious.

Now put the chicken on a plate and cover with the sauce.

Laura recommended serving with white rice, but I had just bought some blue masa harina, so I served them with blue corn tortillas instead.

 
I did NOT turn this into tacos, however. Tacos are antojitos; this is a plato fuerte.

The chicken was tender and juicy from the poaching and the sauce is easily the most delicious thing I've cooked in a long time.

I served the rest of the sauce in a bowl on the side and Mrs MexiGeek and I happily finished it off in one sitting.

There are a couple things in particular I find interesting about this recipe.

First: nothing gets roasted on the comal. It's a very "light" sauce in terms of colour (though, as you can imagine, very rich as well).

Second: only one chipotle. Although I'm an infamous chile-head, one misconception about Mexican food I'd like to set straight is that all Mexican food is blow-your-head-off spicy.

It's not. There are some hot chiles in Mexico, and some very picante dishes; but the role of chiles in Mexican food is to enhance flavour.

This sauce has so nice "afterglow" (to use Diana Kennedy's phrase). The smokiness of the chipotle in particular gives it a depth of flavour and makes it very different from an Asian peanut sauce.

And lastly, this is so quick to make you could have this any night of the week.

If you make the sauce while the chicken and rice are cooking this dish probably represents about 45 minutes from prepping to plating.

And how awesome is it to cook an authentic Mexican meal mid-week, especially one that's a world away from fajitas and other pseudo-Mexican food?

Breakfast with MexiGeek: egg over-easy on a homemade blue corn tortilla

I'm quite used to blue corn tortillas (though I don't get to eat them much any more), but Mrs MexiGeek's reaction to these reminded me that blue isn't a colour everyone is comfortable with in food.

To Mexican food aficionados, blue corn rocks. It has a very different flavour (and texture) to the white corn used in normal tortillas.

I find it a bit sweeter in an almost floral way (definitely NOT sweet like yellow sweetcorn).

I made these tortillas last night. This morning I took one of the leftovers and fried it lightly on each side.

Then I dropped a few cumin seeds into the hot oil, Indian cuisine style.

Then I fried an egg over-easy, seasoning it with salt, pepper, and epazote.

Then I topped the tortilla with the egg and covered it with chipotle sauce.

The rest of the leftovers will go to make blue corn tortilla chips, which are the epitome of tortilla chips.