How Mexico Tastes

It’s never been my intention to promote products here, but in honor of Cinco de Mayo, I make an exception. Stop what you’re doing – finish reading this later – and run right out and buy these tortillas. They are slightly larger than a postcard; they cost twice as much as those corn tortillas that taste and feel like limp paperboard; and one bite will tell you all you need to know.

I just heated one in my toaster oven while frying two eggs in a pan. When I sat down and began eating, I was suddenly transported back to a Mexican beach called Chacala, where I once sat with several friends at a palapa restaurant with no name. We ate pescado sarandeado, fish smoked over wood from the nearby mangroves on a palm frond fire. The fish was served whole on a large platter, and we reached in with our bare hands and scooped out chunks to place in our tortillas (which had just been handmade by the woman standing a few feet away) with salsa and fresh cilantro. Ai, dios mío, que rico.

But I don’t want to get sidetracked right now by the pescado, which can, I’m almost certain, never be recreated in the U.S.

The tortilla experience, however, can be, but only by La Tortilla Factory. Trust me that unless you have a contraption in your backyard – a stove that looks like a Jamaican steel drum – and you are a Mexican woman with plump hands that can roll little balls of masa into perfect, flat circles and then heat them on your steel drum stove, you cannot possibly taste a tortilla like this one. I’ve been searching for it for 10 years now.

And ya está - in Kroger, right by the bakery. It tastes like Mexico. It is worth the extra money. I’ve learned to buy several packages when I find them, because they hold their flavor, even in the freezer. And because Kroger doesn’t always supply them, or even let you special order them (this I’ve also tried).

Ever since Mexico, I’ve sought the smoky taste of tortillas de maiz, made by that ubiquitous woman I just mentioned. And aquí son. Help me keep them in demand. You won’t regret it.