Authored 4/4/2020
Here is my advice to anyone who will listen is this: don’t guzzle your margarita before you cook dinner.
Really, I now speak from experience. Tonight’s experience.
Here are the ingredients for 4 generous drinks. We halved it.
- 3/4cup fresh lime juice, about 3 large limes.
- 6 tablespoons sugar.
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoon blanco tequila.
- 1/4 cup Gran Torres orange liqueur.
- Lime wedges.
- Coarse salt.
- About 1 1/2cups small (or coarsely broken) ice cubes.
Pinto beans were to be refried until I read how to do it and abandoned that idea all together. I was hungry. I was tipsy. No refried beans were going to happen.
However, I had earlier in the day committed to the idea of making tortillas from scratch. My pantry has been safely guarding the masa for about 20 years and tonight was the night. I won’t deny it…it did not smell particularly good, the masa. But I soldiered on and mixed it with the warm water. Kneaded it after a resting period of 5 minutes. Like an archeologist, I unearthed my tortilla press before we took to drink.
The ground beef was cooked with spices ahead of drinking. The lettuce was crisp. The crema was still good although, it was passed it’s sell by date. The salsa was bottled…tomatoes just don’t cut it this time of the year. And anyway, I was making the tortillas. The avocado was past it’s prime but enough of it still looked edible so I made it so.
That was the plan.
Rayman was the bartender. He made the margaritas following the recipe from Rick Bayless. One of the limes was brown but we do what we do given our circumstances in the age of Corona.
As I mentioned earlier, after our before dinner cocktail, it was time to cook and plate. The tortillas would not be separated from the plastic wrap. After adding more masa and kneading it to my own in-my-head rendition of La Bamba, I could not get them onto the heated griddle. So, I found some old tortillas from the store in the frig and used them. They were stale. So, we had opened faced tacos because when I tried to fold them, they cracked. And pintos on the side in a ramekin to hold the broth of the beans. It was passable, but disappointing. However, not too disappointing because we scarfed them up and acted a bit silly too. The margaritas had staying power. And that was dinner party tonight.
Earlier today I made a batch of eggplant with Parmigiano Reggiano. No meat. No deep frying involved. It is now resting in the frig for tomorrow night.
Let’s see. Tomorrow’s plan. Spriti (that is the word I made up to denote two spritz) before dinner. Dinner already made except the salad. Good to go.
Looking back, I am going to buy new masa and perfect the art of tortilla making. It is just literally masa and water. I can do this.
Other than that, we washed windows today, took a long walk, and watched Sound of Music,. I had never seen it. Rayman has seen it many times. He was kind enough to watch it again. It was great…with our headphones and the big screen. When we turned off the TV to go to bed, we both broke into song. Not one key was hit. It was literally a scream.
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