Mini Homemade Chalupas (by G)

I bought a miniature tortilla press when I was in Mexico recently and decided today was the day when I could be bothered going to the effort of making dozens of tiny tortillas.

Chalupa Poblanas seemed like the ideal vehicle for the mini tortillas as it didn't actually involve using them to wrap anything - plus I wanted Biggs to experience the joy of chalupas.

Corn tortilla dough is easy - I made half the regular mix - 1 cup mesa harina, 1/2 tsp salt, 3/4 cup water, mix and rest. The hard (or at least time consuming) bit is pressing the tortillas. I made 26, ate two, leaving 24 for dinner.

For the chalupa slurry I oven roasted half a capsicum, half an onion, 2 jalapeno chillies, 1/2 a tomato and a few garlic cloves then blitzed them up with plenty of oil and some fresh coriander. That was then fried and I added some pork hock meat (from a packet... it was a bit of a last minute idea and packet pork hock was the only non time consuming pork delivery system I could think of. I's actually very good).

Next I dumped the mini tortillas into the pork and vegetable mix, stirred them around to coat them as well as possible then served with a tomato, onion, cucumber, coriander and jalapeno salsa.

The chalupas were not wet and sloppy enough to be traditional, and the flavours were probably a bit cured porky to be authentic but I was most pleased with my efforts. Especially the fact that my mini tortillas didn't reconstitute themselves back into a dough when cooked in sauce.