The first time I encountered a tortilla in a home kitchen was San Francisco in the late nineties. A friend — OK, a bachelor friend — would heat them directly over the flame of his gas burner to give them a little scorch and pliability, then fill them as warranted. He could make quesadillas in his cast iron skillet, which seemed super-manly and exciting, or little shrimp tacos with cabbage and salsa verde.
It was the kind of cooking you learn in the pages of Esquire. And it impressed me, just as it was meant to.
When I returned to the East Coast, tortillas had been rechristened wraps, and they were everywhere. Big old flour tortillas stuffed with Caesar salad, turkey and Swiss, or corned beef. Sandwich fusion.
These wraps were stiff, and floury. Sure, the shape of a burrito is cute, and it’s a tight little package and it makes sense when you’ve got warm rice and beans inside. A warm filling gives the tortillas pliability and interest. But without the warm ingredients, the wrap is just a stiff dough. It made me sad. But in the name of convenience, everyone was eating them. Entire deli sandwich displays were dedicated to these wraps, and people were buying them. Was I the only one who thought this was a bad idea?
I want to make another point — when you wrap a tortilla into a burrito shape, you get two nubs — one at each end. Burrito butts if you will. And that butt is nothing but tortilla; no filling, no bacon, no cheese. It’s the equivalent of bunching up a cold tortilla in your mouth and chewing on it. Yick.
On those occasions when I was forced to eat a wrap (in-house corporate lunches, etc), I became the person who would tear the burrito butt off the wrap, which metaphorically made me the kind of girl who cuts her crusts off. I didn’t want to be that kind of girl.
A few years ago, I was in Mexico, at a small taco stand outside a restaurant. A small TV was plugged in by a cord that ran back into the kitchen. Good things happen in roadside taco stands, especially when soccer is on the screen, and this place was no exception. While my husband plowed through some Presidentes and spoke sports with the owner, I received a tortilla lesson from his wife. She made the masa, rolled it into balls, then pressed them on her tortilla maker.
She did this every night.
Why? Because what kind of a doofus would eat a day-old tortilla?
Back in the US, not only are we eating day old tortillas, we’re eating month old tortillas, straight out of the refrigerator, filled with cold ingredients. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better.
And so NJ, I ask: If you want a container for your salad, why don’t you use a container? Don’t eat the insipid, aging wrap that’s acting as a low-nutritional value, high-calorie bowl. Next time you’re eating a cold wrap, ask yourself: Does it taste good? No, it doesn’t. If you don’t like it, don’t put it in your mouth.
Ditch the wrap. Welcome the tortilla, flour or corn. Those are tortillas as they should be. (How they shouldn’t be is made with spelt or flavored with sun-dried tomatoes or spinach. Over-processed and weird.)
Want to make tortilla soup? Go for it, then pan fry or bake those corn tortilla strips and enjoy the crunch. Make quesadillas for the kids as a midday weekend meal. Make burritos! But kindly call them what they are, tortillas. And stop acting like a cold wrap tastes good. It doesn’t and you know it, and you know what? You’re better than that.
Allison Fishman is the host of Yahoo’s Blue Ribbon Hunter and author of You Can Trust A Skinny Cook. For delicious humor & recipes, visit allisonfishman.com or follow @allisonfishman on Twitter.