‘Masa’ Will Teach You Everything You Can Do With Tortillas

Welcome to “Cookbook of the Week.” This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own. 

When we were first dating, I used to visit my boyfriend in his neighborhood of West New York, New Jersey. (This post isn’t about how confusing that town’s name is.). That’s when I discovered that West New York is a secret hub for incredible Latin American food.

Every hole in the wall to the large-scale restaurants we went to was incredible, but the place that stands out the most in my memory was a basic-looking corner restaurant on a quiet street. There was never anyone else in there when we’d stop by, probably because I was working an evening shift at a bakery and kept odd hours. We would always get the same order: memelas de pollo.

The cookbook I’ve chosen for this week is called Masa. The eponymous ingredient is made from corn that has been treated with alkali materials and ground to a powder. This harina, or flour, makes a simple dough when combined with water, and this is masa. It is the foundation of countless homemade meals, like memelas, tlayudas, and tamales, and even the inspiration behind packaged foods from the grocery store, like those eight-packs of taco shells and bags of tortilla “scoops.” Even if you’ve never heard of masa, there’s a good chance you’ve eaten a version of it.

The restaurant in West New York may have given me my first experience eating handmade, fresh memelas. A memela is a flat corn tortilla (made from masa dough), deep fried, and topped with various ingredients, like sauces, meats, and fresh cheese. Every time we ate there, the tortillas sent me to another realm. The corn tortillas were slightly thicker on the edges—far different from the industrially produced taco shells I’d theretofore eaten—and one bite told me why. As the disc of masa fries up, it acquires an ultra thin, shattering crust that you easily break through to expose the interior, a thin layer of soft, pillowy tortilla. The flavor is an explosion of toasted corn. The toppings are important, but the masa is the star. 

Despite mapping the location over and over again, I can’t remember the name of this magical spot. and I fear that the pandemic may have ushered it out. Until I can go back to see for myself, they’re still slingin’ memelas in my mind.

A bit about the book

Masa is a comprehensive overview of this indispensable ingredient. The entire front section is devoted to its origins and history, the process of nixtamalization, an exploration of how fresh masa has evolved to become more available, and how to make your own with dry field corn and calcium hydroxide. The author, Jorge Gaviria, is the founder of Masienda, an heirloom masa and corn purveyor. 

I’ll tell you now, ordering their masa allows you to experience the flavor benefit of nixtamalized corn flour without having to boil and loosen corn skin. The blue and red varieties of heirloom masa harina are a bit pricey if you’re just starting to make your own tortillas, but the white corn masa harina I linked above is more affordable. You can also stick to your own tortilla-making methods if you wish, and just use the recipes in the book. 

A great cookbook for the tortilla nerd

It might seem like a small subset, but there are actually a lot of corn tortilla fans out there, and they’d devour this book. Not only do the recipes deliver delicious edible results, but that’s only the second half: The first half is a detailed account of why you can make incredible food with masa harina, the tools you need, and what to look for while cooking. There’s even a whole section about alkalinity control. It’s a good example of the author nerding-out on the thing he loves the most. 

Pick this book for the person in your life who laments about the quality of tortillas from the restaurants nearby, or who often gets misty-eyed over their aunt’s huaraches. Grab it for yourself if you’ve been chasing that perfect chicken memela from your past. 

The recipes you can expect

I’ve enjoyed making a few recipes from Masa, including pupusas, flautas, and simple hard-shell fried tacos. Granted, I did not grow up shaping tortillas, I have no tortilla press or comal, and I will not hide the fact that my flautas were severely misshapen. But know this: Each recipe has been grunt-worthy fantastic. 

The recipes in Masa are easy to read and simple to prepare. It’s really just different ways to shape and cook the masa you’ve made, but the dishes are inspiringly varied. I like that each recipe starts off with its respective root country. At the top it will list Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, or even the region or town, if the recipe is traceable. Underneath that is the “format”—whether it’s a “topper,” like a taco, or a “stuffer,” like the gordita. This is followed by the cooking method, listing fried, comal, or deep fried, which gives you the opportunity to grab the right tools or skip on to a different recipe. Then there’s a quick note before some short paragraphs of instruction. 

Thankfully, each recipe has a storage section at the end. You’re making all these flavorful and delicate tortillas and shells. It would be a shame to waste the leftovers.

The dish I chose this week

I think my lack of experience shaping and pressing masa should add a dash of hope for the nervous tortilla maker. The masa dough itself is incredibly simple—masa harina and warm water. From there, you shape that dough and cook it in a variety of ways. My failure at shaping still led to a successful dish, and that’s a good sign. 

Technically, I made one and a half recipes this week. I say “half” because as I mentioned, my flauta—well, I don’t know if anyone else would categorize their flat stature as meeting the criteria for flauta. I ate it though, and it was stellar. The magic of my “flat-as” was the flaky, delicate, and flavorful masa harina. If you have that then you’ll enjoy whatever shape it takes. 

After realizing that I should maybe start with something more basic, I settled on the recipe for Bollos, a stuffed masa dumpling with origins in Venezuela. My masa mixture felt really nicely hydrated, despite my failures elsewhere, so shaping the little dumplings was easy. I decided to keep it simple and stuff them with shredded mozzarella, as I had plenty on hand. I dropped the balls of cheese-stuffed blue corn masa into boiling water and let them cook away. A short 10 minutes later, I was enjoying warm, fluffy, corn-tastic cheese bollos with hot sauce. 

How to buy it

You can buy the Masa cookbook online, of course, which is convenient, but if you’re able, I suggest dropping into your brick and mortar bookshop. You can also order straight from the Masienda shop if you prefer to support their business directly.