I’m trying to recall the first time I ever made a flour tortilla. I think it was when I was in San Diego and I used butter, all purpose bleached flour, and water. I remember them coming out super hard almost like a cracker. I tried probably another two times before calling it quits.
Since I was so close to different Mexican shops I decided I would just take advantage of that all I could, rather than try to recreate things myself. That was all fine until I moved again, this time to Amsterdam in The Netherlands.
Amsterdam
Like every other time I’ve moved, within weeks I was missing Mexican food. I tried every new shop I heard about and eventually settled for Doner Kebab as my new overlord.
It’s like the Mexican food of Europe, they even have a dish called a kapsalon here that is like the carne asada fries back home, except with doner meat rather than carne asada.
Tokyo
The first time I experienced this craving for Mexican food that I couldn’t satisfy was when I moved to Japan in 2008, nearly 10 years later I was still facing the same problem.
So with a trip back to San Diego scheduled I decided now was the time to visit the greats in Los Angeles and across the border with the mission of solving this problem once and for all, starting with creating tortillas from scratch.
