This is the stove that pretty much everyone (including restaurants) cooks on. It’s made of cement, with a metal grill that I’m told was the latest innovation when it came out. (I think this stove is the replacement for a campfire on the kitchen floor, actually.) The metal circles are removable in case you want to boil your water quicker, and the whole surface is used for tortilla-making. The front part is “high,” the back part is “low.” The fire-starting process involved the 8-year-old son splitting a special firestarting wood into tiny pieces with a machete and lighting it up.
Lwin’s mom taught me how to make tortillas. The process involves washing corn with lime, carrying it to the mill where a line of women waits to put their corn through the belt-driven grinder for 12 cents, scooping up your masa from the bottom of the grinder, carrying it back home, and shaping it by hand like so:
Notice how large and white I look in the photo, and also that Lwin’s mom is wearing a Hello Kitty T-shirt. After a while, she said I didn’t suck at tortilla-making anymore.
Yes, I'm pretty sure that woman comes up to your shoulder...if you slouch. Maybe when you get back, you can wear a Hello Kitty t-shirt and make tortillas for me kneeling, so as to recreate an authentic experience. :)
ReplyDeleteAre you wearing a skirt?! :-)
ReplyDeleteThe other day I tried making tortillas from scratch!!! I couldn't get them to flatten out thin enough without sticking to everything and falling apart, so I made "tortilla chips," which means I threw the bits into the pan and fried them despite their non-tortilla-ness. Heh.
ReplyDeleteThe ones they have here are handmade thick ones- if you{re making the thin ones, you need a press!
ReplyDelete