La Tortilleria: Mexican staple prepared the authentic way
Behind the success of Diana Hull and Gerardo Lopez’s La Tortilleria lies a love of authentic Mexican cuisine.
Derrimut, at the western extreme of Melbourne’s endless sprawl en route to Adelaide, is a place of small-scale factories, trade businesses and new residential communities; quintessential outer suburban Australia — and an unlikely outpost of Mesoamerican civilisation and a food processing technique thought to have evolved sometime between 1500BC and 1200BC in what is now Guatemala.
It’s certainly not where you’d expect to find a small business striving to maintain an artisan Mexican food culture, or indeed a workforce with several expat Mexican specialists including a third-generation tortillero.
But strip away the functional modern premises and state-of-the-art machinery imported from Mexico, and you have a direct link to the traditional tortillerias found throughout Mexico: the small, family-owned businesses that produce artisan foodstuffs connected with Aztec and Mayan civilisations, little shops producing a staple as fundamental to Mexico as bread is to Europe or rice to Asia.
“Maybe more so,” says co-owner Diana Hull. “In Mexico, the tortilla is everything.”
La Tortilleria is not only a key supplier to just about every decent Mexican restaurant in Australia and some specialist retailers; it’s a keeper of the flame when it comes to a traditional food craft under threat, even in its homeland, from increased food industrialisation.
“I have to admit that as a Mexican I had little idea about tortillas,” says Hull’s business partner Gerardo Lopez, a former IT consultant, in a piece written for the forthcoming book Taqueria by Melbourne chef Paul Wilson.
“This journey of discovery opened my eyes to a side of Mexico that I did not know existed: a courageous Mexico in which indigenous communities fight every day to keep their traditions alive under threat from large multinational companies and (the) government.
“Despite the fact that industrialisation and science have introduced advanced techniques to mass-produce tortillas and genetically modify maize to produce better yields, indigenous Mexicans have rejected these and the promise of ‘modernisation’ in favour of keeping the tradition of nixtamal tortilla-making alive.”
Even in Derrimut.
To understand the significance of what Hull and Lopez have done in three short years, you must first ask yourself: how is an authentic tortilla made? If you answered “cornflour and water”, it’s straight to the back of the class.
Thousands of years ago, the pre-Hispanic ancestors of today’s Mexican society discovered that the process of cooking and steeping dried corn in an alkaline solution — nixtamalisation — transformed the corn, making available a variety of beneficial nutrients in the grain.
As an anthropology student in Mexico City in 2008, Hull fell in love with the foodstuff that is authentic tortilla, eaten with just about every meal, and the story behind its evolution and its role in nurturing an ancient and fascinating civilisation.
“When I went to Mexico, I realised everything I thought I knew about Mexican food was wrong,” says Hull, who has deftly parlayed a masters degree in anthropology into a food business with serious history.
She quickly learned about the traditional tortillerias that dotted the suburbs, producing a Mexican staple.
Ultimately, she got the opportunity to work in several of them, learning the craft as best she could with a view to filling what she saw as a void in the Australian market. The business she founded in 2013 with Mexican expat Lopez is the only producer in Australia, she believes, that follows the traditional process on a commercial scale.
Hull explains the process. It starts with the right corn, a white kernel species more commonly known as maize, which they source from northern NSW.
“It’s generally thought of as stock feed,” she says.
It comes to them dried, in 25kg sacks; she won’t say how many are used up each week but her tortillas are sold in every state across the country.
The kernels are cooked for an hour in a lime and salt solution, then steeped overnight in sizeable tanks, where a kind of magic happens, releasing a range of nutrients not available in merely ground and cooked corn.
These nixtamalised kernels are then stoneground at high speed to produce the snowlike — in appearance — masa, a gluten-free dough if you like, that can then be formed into the shape of a tortilla via a sheeter/cutter. No flour, no water.
From there, the raw tortillas pass back and forth through a special oven on a cast-iron caterpillar track heated by gas jets, ranging from the hottest to the coolest.
The fragrance and texture are quite unlike anything else. Hull likens the difference between masa tortilla and a mass-produced cornflour (masa harina) version to that between instant potato mash, with all its additives, and the real thing.
Lopez admits he knew little about the process before investigating the business. But he did know what he was missing.
“Growing up in Mexico, I knew that the best tortillas were always found in small towns where indigenous Mexicans kept alive traditions that dated back to pre-Hispanic time,” he says.
“Like most people, I assumed that what made these tortillas so special over the ones you find in the big cities in Mexico was the fact that they were made by hand. Little I knew that the secret to the best tortillas was (the) ancient process of nixtamal.”
The pair launched their business in 2013 in the inner Melbourne suburb of Kensington with small premises, basic equipment and an uncompromising attitude, making tortillas and a variety of authentic Mexican dishes.
They had unwittingly tapped into a nascent demand for authenticity and artisanal produce, with chefs beating a path to their door to snap up the tortillas. A factory became inevitable; they set it up in Derrimut late in 2014, while maintaining the Kensington premises as a delightful, unprepossessing Mexican eatery.
But Hull emphasises that producing the masa and turning it into tortillas is no set-and-forget process: she likens it to making coffee, with constant monitoring for batch variation, humidity, temperature, different sources of grain with varying characteristics, resting time, stone tension and baking times, which require constant adjustment. The machinery, she adds, needs frequent tweaking.
“It’s all about the texture,” she says. “Isaac (Narov, their tortillero) will feel the masa every 10 minutes or so during production. It’s in his blood.”
The tortillero is, to some extent, the barista of the tortilla business.
“Each tortillero will create a unique tortilla that is crafted with techniques particular to her or his family heritage, and that will taste different from the tortillas across the street,” says Lopez.
“Just as we enjoy the coffee from a specific barista, blend or country of origin, a tortilla will be different based on where the corn comes from, the variety of corn and the unique craft applied to it.”
Alfredo Pimienta, owner of El Atino in Melbourne’s Richmond, stocks the La Tortilleria brand in the deli section of his bright, modern cafe.
“They remind me of the tortilleria near my mum’s house in Mexico City, with that distinctive tortilla flavour and smell you only get from nixtamal tortillas,” Pimienta says. “I cannot remember a day we didn’t have tortillas at home, always fresh from the corner tortilleria.”
La Tortilleria won the best innovation prize at the 2016 Delicious Produce Awards in Sydney last night.
Restaurants serving La Tortilleria tortillas include Mamasita and Fonda, Melbourne; Chica Bonita, Sydney; Lucky Lupitas and Mexican Society, Adelaide; and The Apo, Brisbane.
CHORIZO AND SWEET POTATO QUESADILLAS
Mexican chorizo is served loosely minced (ground) rather than as a sausage in a skin, so it’s easy to have some fun by adding your own unique flavours. Here I’ve given things a bit of a twist by adding sweet potatoes to the meat, though other vegetables that like spice such as eggplant, cauliflower, marrow or pumpkin would also be great.
Ingredients
8 large homemade masa flour tortillas or store-bought tortillas
30g (1 oz) green or golden raisins, soaked in hot water for 5 minutes and drained
30g (1 oz/¼ cup) pepitas (pumpkin seeds), toasted
50g (1¾ oz) salted ricotta, finely chopped
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley or rocket leaves
Chorizo, chicken and sweet potato filling
olive oil for frying
200g (7 oz) sweet potato, finely diced
Juice of 2 limes
1 bunch oregano leaves, chopped
3 garlic cloves, very finely diced
1 red onion, diced
400g (14 oz) minced (ground) chicken
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon ground cumin
pinch of ground allspice
2 poblano chillies or green capsicums, skins removed
2 jalapenos, finely chopped
4 roma (plum) tomatoes, coarsely chopped
150ml (5 fl oz) Mexican salsa verde or salsa taqueria
200g (7 oz) smooth ricotta or panela cheese
To make the filling, heat a splash of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, add the sweet potato and cook for 4 minutes or until softened. Add the oregano and lime juice, season with salt and set aside.
Heat a splash of olive oil in another large saucepan or casserole dish over medium-high heat, add the garlic and onions and cook for 5 minutes until golden.
Add the chicken and spices and cook together briskly for 2 minutes, then add the chillies, jalapenos and tomatoes, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the salsa verde to the pan together with the sweet potato mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper, adding more salsa verde if required to ensure the mince is well coated in sauce.
Arrange the tortillas on a clean work surface and top with a spoonful of the chicken mixture. Scatter over a little of the smooth ricotta or panela cheese, then add another spoonful of the mince. Scatter over a little more cheese, then carefully fold over the tortilla. Repeat this with the remaining tortillas and filling ingredients.
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).
Heat a non-stick frying pan over high heat. Lightly spray with oil and briefly fry the quesadillas for 2 minutes on each side to seal. Transfer to a baking tray and bake in the oven for 5 minutes until lightly golden.
To serve, divide the quesadillas among plates and scatter over the raisins, pepitas, salted ricotta and parsley leaves.
Tip
For an equally satisfying vegetarian dish, instead of the chicken chorizo, use finely chopped eggplant, mushrooms or tofu and cook as before. Serve with spicy sesame and peanut salsa.
This is an edited extract from Taqueria by Paul Wilson, to be published on December 1 (Hardie Grant Books, $40).