Pork Tostadas (by G)

I'm always on the look out for tortilla style food ideas, I had been thinking about making tostadas for some time but seeing Bourdain eat some nice ones in Mexico recently sealed the deal for this week.

I thought it would be a good idea, as I was trying something new, I should stick with a familiar ingredient so I decided on pork for the topping. Unfortunately the pork was the downfall.

In order to get it tender I simmered it in a vegetable stock with extra onion and garlic, along with paprika and cumin (also some some of the birdseye chillies Biggs brought home yesterday). The recipe called for 6 - 8 hours of simmering. Knowing I don't have that much time in any one weekday I decided to simmer it for half the time yesterday and finish it off today. The pork was tender but very soggy - and that affected the whole meal.

To add some variety I also mashed an avocado with salt and lime juice, pickled some cucumber, radish and shallot in a sugar and vinegar mix, I also made a picante sauce by blending shallot, green capsicum, garlic, coriander and a large dried mulato chilli (which I had pre soaked).

The picante sauce turned out a bit bland but what are you going to do?

To make the tostadas I mixed some yellow corn powder (what the Mexicans call Maiz Amarillo) with salt and water then rested for an hour. After an hour it appeared I had successfully made a solid block of polenta. Fortunately the polenta block was not as solid as it looked and was easily balled and flattened in the tortilla press. One recipe I read advised that I dry the little yellow disks in the oven - this was potentially a mistake because they started to curl at the edges - anyway, after that I fried the tostadas in hot oil.

The tostadas turned out not-too-bad - I could have fried the tostadas longer to make them crispier and I certainly wish I had oven roasted the pork to avoid it getting mushy.  These are things I can correct next time I make tostadas.