Raw+Simple

Today I am reviewing a recipe for raw corn tortillas that calls for delicious raw just-cut-from-the-cob sweet corn. As I mention at the very bottom, my quibble with this recipe is the inclusion of the bell peppers – making it too astringent for me. I will be remaking this soon, without bell pepper (but perhaps a hint of the cayenne I saved from last year’s garden).

This recipe calls for flax flour. You can buy flax flour but I enjoy making it fresh from organic flax seeds using my new Vita-Mix machine’s dry blender jar. Its so satisfying to use it to make this fresh flax flour as well as flour from sprouted grains.

Raw Corn Tortillas (Adapted from a recipe found at Gone Raw!)

Ingredients:

• 4 C fresh sweet corn, just cut off of the cob
• 1 red bell pepper, quartered
• 1 C flax seeds, unsoaked, finely ground into flour using your Vita-Mix!
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

Pour the 1 cup flax seeds (dry) into the dry Vita-Mix jug and grind until a powder. Be careful that you stop occasionally to dislodge caked flour at the bottom and nudge down any unground flax seeds.

Once ground, decant to a food processor.

Cut the corn kernels from the cobs (toss cobs to your backyard chickens, they will LOVE it) and add 4 cups to the food processor.

Clean a small red bell pepper of it’s seeds and pith, cut up and add to the food processor.

Don’t forget to add the teaspoon of salt, too.

Start to process your dough, making sure to stop occasionally to push larger chunks down into the blade (while the processor is off, that is)

Continue with the mixing until you get a homogeneous, even mixture. Some chunks of red pepper MAY refuse to chop up. You might have better luck than me!

Put about 1/3 of the mix onto your paraflexx sheet.

Spread the mix out onto paraflexx sheets, evenly layering, and put into dehydrator. I would suggest scoring your tortillas before drying.

Run for 1 hour at 135F then put down to 115F for 3-4 hours. Rotate trays every 30 mins or so. Once sheets have dried enough to peel them up off of the paraflexx sheet, flip and dry further until the tortilla sheets are no longer tacky but retains flexibility.

These are now ready to be used in recipes where wraps are called for.

Next time I make this, I am going to add some cayenne powder to the mix to pop the flavor a bit more.

My one huge criticism of this is that the red pepper imparts a very astringent flavor that some people might like, I am not liking that so much. The flavor of corn is fighting to break through the bell pepper astringency, its there and its valiant but the red bell pepper is very dominant. I am going to have to find another way to use these and then redo this recipe with no pepper.

For the presentation above, I marinated some raw summer squash/zucchini in organic tamati, lemon juice, and olive oil for some 15 minutes and then cut them into strips. I also diced some of this and added tomato and cilantro for the diced part you see above.

To get the tortilla to form into the round wrap shape I held it over some steaming water. It tenderizes very quickly. You have to form your shape quickly because the tortilla will then lose the pliability quickly and settle into the shape you gave it.