Flatbread--Second Experiment

Today, because I had time before supper, I decided to give the making of flatbread another try.  This time, because we are having chili con carne for dinner, I figured I'd try making flatbreads from corn flour, of which I have a goodly amount in store.

The corn flour reacted very differently to the "slowly add in water" technique.  It became a soft cohesive mass fairly quickly, without a lot of stickiness.  In fact, bits tended to crumble off quite easily, so I kept adding water until that propensity was curtailed (though not eliminated).

The tortilla recipe on the corn flour bag is similar to the technique I've been using, but it presumes that the dough will not be rolled out, but will be stamped to size in a tortilla press, after the dough has been sitting, covered under damp cloths, for a while.  I covered mine with a wet, crumpled, paper towel, since I can imagine how impossible this dough would be to handle if it dried out.

Even though the dough did not dry out, it became no easier to handle.  I could mold it into a ball, but when I tried to make a flat cake out of it, it kept crumbling apart.  i ended up putting it in the pan when it was at least twice as thick as my wheaten batch, and I believe I undercooked it as a result (despite leaving it in the pan until it had at least a few char marks on it).

The tortilla directions on my corn flour bag suggested putting rather more salt into the dough than I was comfortable with using (a quarter of a teaspoon of salt for 2 cups of flour) and I wonder if adding more salt than the pinch I added would have made a difference.  I suspect, however, that corn flour, lacking gluten as it does, may require a slightly different technique than wheat flour.  If I ever make flatbreads with corn flour again, I will add a substantial portion of wheat flour (perhaps even a 50/50 mix) to see whether it improves the handling of the dough.

These experiments make me rather leery of trying to make flatbread from barley flour alone.  Perhaps I'll try a barley and wheat flour mix.  That mix may be easier to handle, and both grains were available to the Vikings.

Chili Con Carne

This weekend, I had a lot of housework to do, so I confined my cooking to an old standby:  chili con carne (i.e., Spanish for "chili with meat").  I make mine in my crockpot with a recipe adapted from the recipe pamphlet that came with the crockpot.  Like the chili I grew up with, it features ground beef, kidney beans, tomatoes, onions, and bell pepper.  The basic spices are chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper, but I usually add garlic and mustard powder to the mix, and 3 or 4 heaping tablespoons of maize flour to thicken it.

I had known for years that different people had different recipes for chili, and that there were whole debates over whether a proper chili should contain anything other than meat and sauce, and whether the meat should be ground beef or cut-up steak, but I was hazy on exactly when and how chili came to be eaten here in the U.S.

So I asked my friend, Google, and both Wikipedia and other sites attribute the popularization of chili, if not its original invention, to San Antonio, Texas beginning in the 1880s.  Hispanic women, nicknamed "chili queens," would set up pots in the town square and sell their stew to passersby.  The town fathers of San Antonio  killed off this practice by the 1940s by passing ordinances requiring these street-food sellers to meet all of the same regulations as restaurants, but by then the dish was well-established.

There appear to be different stories about the time of chili's origin. The Food Timeline notes that the dish must be of Mexican inspiration but that even Mexican sources reject this claim.

Whatever one concludes about the origins of chili con carne, the dish is tasty and economical, which is why my husband and I eat it so often.