Wraps finished and filled, yum!
I love wraps! I am especially a fan of something-and-salad wraps for lunch. I am not really a fan of the commercial ones though, especially due to packaging and their content of additives. I know the additives are in there to make the wraps shelf stable, but I just don’t like ingesting them! It is also cheaper for us to make them from staples we already have on hand and are bought in bulk.
About ten years ago I started experimenting with making our own wraps and after a few (sometimes ghastly) mistakes I was able to settle down on one particular formulation and kept making that.
The recipe is:
Wholemeal flour 1 cup
Bakers flour 1 cup
Salt 1 tsp
Oil 3 tbsp
Water 2/3 cup (warmed)
To make them I put all of the dry stuff, plus the oil into a bowl, then add the water slowly as I use my hands to mix the dough. I have found that by holding back a bit on the water it is easier to get a good texture on the dough as sometimes too much water can make the dough a bit sticky. Once the dough is mixed it needs to rest for 20 minutes so I put a tea towel on top and put it aside. Once it is ready I cut the dough into four or eight pieces, roll them out using a tapered ‘French’ rolling pin and circular board (which works for me!) and place them on the preheated pan.
Dough made, cut to four pieces, ready roll out
We have a wok ring on the stove, so I get that going and put a large fry pan (290mm bottom) on it to heat up. I have found that putting the wraps on the pan when it is still just heating up slows down the cooking process, but at the same time dries them out so that they lose some of their flexibility. Heating the pan to 180°C to 190°C works best and I use an infrared thermometer to check before putting the wrap in the pan. If the temperature is right, it only takes a couple of minutes on each side to cook them perfectly.
Once cooked I remove them from the pan and put them between folds of a tea towel to let them cool down but not dry out. (It is usually the tea towel from the top of the bowl that I use)
The recipe above was designed to make eight wraps (or tortillas) to a batch of dough, which I found to be interesting but not particularly convenient, because the wraps came out somewhere between 150mm and 180mm in diameter, and that was somewhat smaller than I wanted. I changed things up and started making four wraps per batch of dough, which brought them up to 240mm in diameter, and this turned them into a decent meal.
Rolling out
Fast forward to the first No-Buy July (2019) and all of a sudden, I was making them all the time, twice or three times a week. I also found that they were quite versatile. While I am not sure my internal system would deal with a breakfast wrap, we do have them regularly for lunch and tea. Recently I have also gained an appreciation for the smaller eight-wraps-to-a dough-batch size as well.
The lunch wraps we consume are generally something and salad and the something is usually cheese, salmon (for Linda, not me) or egg salad. The salad depends on the time of year but at least contains our lettuce and, where possible, tomatoes. Other salady stuff includes capsicum, mushrooms, cucumber, beetroot, grated carrot, potato salad (When I make some) corn kernels and whatever else we have on hand. By changing things up we can keep it fresh, and they make a tasty and filling lunch. Around Christmas time I have also been known to add a bit of ham!
Rolled out
For the evening meal I put together tea-wraps (sometimes referred to by me as T-Rex for some reason!) which we make and eat for tea. They are always full size wraps. I do a stir fry of onion, capsicum, mushrooms, grated carrot and cabbage, sometimes with egg, sometimes not and a bit of soy sauce added. I then put some mayo or garlic aioli onto a wrap, plus some grated cheese, then put the stir fry on, wrap it up, and crisp it up in the sandwich press.
Another thing I do, also with full sized wraps, is to heat up some previously cooked beans and toss over some of our home-made Mexican spice mix and a bit of water. Then we put salad on a wrap, some of the beans, some cheese and yoghourt plus a bit of sweet chili sauce, roll and eat!
Cooking
With the small wraps, these are usually eaten with a Mexican inspired filling. This can be onion, capsicum and mushroom, stir fried with added Mexican spice. One of the small tortillas is placed flat, with some cheese on it and a portion of the filling placed on top, followed by a second small wrap. They are then toasted in the sandwich press and then cut into quarters and consumed in the form of Anglo-quesadillas. Sometimes we add yoghurt and sweet chili sauce too.
Completed, ready to fill
Another way we use them is as soft tacos, consuming them wrapped around my home made ‘Mexican’ rice with or without salad, stir fry similar to what goes on the quesadillas above, grated cheese and yoghourt.
With the large four to a batch sized wraps, we usually consume one each, leaving two left over for another meal. They do tend to fall apart a bit after a day or two, however, so any leftovers go into a container and into the freezer immediately after making. The same process goes for any leftover small tortillas.
Anglo-quesadillas
Over the years our homemade wraps/tortillas have become a constant part of our diet, originally put together as an experiment, their position solidified by the original No-Buy July and still regularly in use today!
Links
Original Wrap Article
No-Buy July eBook
Tea Wrap Article
Article containing ‘Mexican’ rice recipe
Anglo-quesadilla article
