Whole Wheat Tortillas

In Tokyo if I want to eat tacos, I can order something called taco rice that tastes like ground pork mixed with ketchup put on top of rice. Or I can get on a train and go to a fancy, upscale grocery store to buy way over priced Ole El Paso hard taco shells. Or I can walk 3 minutes to a normal grocery store, buy flour, and then make flour tortillas. Flour tortillas are actually quite simple to make, and when I went to the store today they had whole wheat flour so I decided to make whole wheat tortillas.

This is a small recipe, so if you are feeding more than 2 people or have a particularly large appetite you will want to double it.

Ingredients:
1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/3 Cup Water
¼ tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Salt
1 TBSP Oil

What to Do:

Mix flour and water. Whole wheat does not absorb water as easily as white flour, so it’s good to let the flour and water sit for by themselves for a while. This will help prevent your tortillas from having a cardboard texture.

Stir in baking powder, oil, and salt. The dough should form a ball.

Knead for a minute or two. This is a small recipe so it doesn’t take the dough long to get nice and stretchy. It’s also really easy to do because there’s so much oil in there.

Let the dough rest at least 15 minutes.

Divide the dough up into balls. I made 6, which were a little on the small side.

This picture does a pretty good job showing just how tiny my apartment is. Usually I'm a little more careful about it with my pictures.

Anyways, roll out the dough into as circular of a shape as you can. It should be pretty thin, but thick enough to withstand anything you might be filling it with later. If the dough keeps retracting as you roll, that means you should let the dough rest a little longer and then try again.

Heat an ungreased frying pan to medium high. Then put in a tortilla. It only needs to cook about 30 seconds on each side.

Wrap the fresh tortillas in a towel to preserve their softness.

Chicken Tacos with Green Salsa

TFC Toledo has become TFC Tokyo. It's almost the same except "led" has become "ky." Anyways, I made these tacos right before leaving Toledo. They are very limey because I love limes, and I knew I wouldn't be able to get them as easily in Tokyo. Plus Japanese tacos are hard to find, and even then they taste like they are made with extra sugary ketchup. This recipe fed 3 people.

Chicken Taco Filling

Ingredients:
2 Large chicken breasts
1 TBSP Lime Juice
1/4 Cup chicken stock
1 Lime
Jalapeno
Couple Cloves of Garlic
1 Small Onion
1 tsp Coriander
1 TBSP Cumin
A little black pepper
Cilantro
Olive Oil

What to Do:

Get out your crock pot, or prepare to use a pan on low on your stove.

Put the chicken stock and lime juice into your pot. Sometimes with slow cooking all the flavor gets cooked out of things like lime or lemon juice, but for some reason it made me feel better to put a little juice into the crock pot anyways. For long lasting lime flavor, take a whole lime, poke a few holes in it with a fork, and then put the whole thing in the pot.


Next put in the cumin, coriander, pepper, garlic, onion, and jalepeno. You can actually just leave the garlic and onion whole or in large pieces, and you can put in the spices in the seed or corn format. Once again, slow cooking can make spices lose flavors so it can be better to leave everything whole. I just strain everything out later on.

Put in the chicken and turn your crock pot on. On high it takes about an hour and a half to cook, low would probably take closer to 3 hours.

The meat should be pretty tender when it's done cooking, and you should be able to shred it a bit with forks. If you used whole spices, take the chicken out of the cooking liquid before shredding it. Then strain the cooking liquid.

Next take your shredded chicken and the strained cooking juice and put it back in your crock pot on high. Throw on some oregano and olive oil. You can taste everything, and adjust the seasonings as you wish. If you like spicy things, you might want to add some cayenne pepper or chili powder. If you do this part in a crock pot, you don't need to put the lid back on. I actually did this part on low on the stove, but that was because I still had seeds and stuff stuck in my crock pot. The main purpose of this is just kind of heating things back up again after shredding everything, and to get the tasty cooking liquid back on the chicken.



When everything is nice and hot, sprinkle in some fresh cilantro. Then serve in anyways you enjoy eating tacos. Personally, I like these on a flour tortilla with some green salsa.



Green Salsa

Ingredients:
About 10 tomatillos (or more if they are exceptionally small)
1 or 2 jalapenos
Big Handful of fresh cilantro
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
Squeeze or lime juice
salt and pepper

What to Do:

Husk the tomatillos and cut them in half. Heat up a frying pan on high, then throw in the tomatillos and let them get a little black on the outside. I'm not actually sure if this is necessary, but I feel like at some point in my life someone of the Food Network told me this was a good idea, like maybe it brought out the sweetness a little.

Put tomatillos, jalepenos, cilantro, and garlic into a food processor and process away. I make it pretty smooth, but it's up to you how chunky you like it. Then add lime juice, salt, and pepper to your liking. I'm a fan of sour things, but if you're not you could add a little bit of sugar.


Put this on your limey chicken taco and you will be very satisfied! Or stick it in a festive bowl and get out the tortilla chips.