Both of my daughters love to cook. One of their favorite types of cooking is reproducing favorite restaurant menu items and commercial food products.
Many years ago on a family vacation, we enjoyed these beautiful and large tostada salads. They were served in crispy, deep-fried flour tortilla bowls. We've talked about buying the tool needed to make tortilla bowls like those, but never got around to it.
Sunday afternoon both daughters were out garage-saling, and what did they find? They found a pair of forms for making flour tortilla bowls for 75 cents. That evening they researched how best to make these bowls. (There are a couple of methods.)
Earlier this week they tried out two methods, both using homemade flour tortilla dough, and determined that one way produced the crispiest tortilla bowl. They made a stack of these bowls to use on their respective cooking nights. So, yeah, we had tostada salads both Monday and Tuesday.
Don't these salads look gorgeous? The crispy tortilla bowl was filled with refried beans, carne asada, cheese, lettuce, green onions, tomatoes, and olives. Salsa was served on the side. The only items missing that the restaurant version had was sour cream and guacamole. For the price, our tostada salad bowls were fantastic and didn't miss anything by not having the sour cream and guac.
Do you have favorite restaurant meals that you've recreated?
That's fun! And an inexpensive way to try making the bowls. Are those deep fried like they are in the restaurants?
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteThe ones we liked best were semi deep-fried. My daughters lightly fried rolled out tortilla dough in a skillet with oil, then before they browned, they removed them from the hot oil and pressed them into the forms with a spoon and tongs. At that point they baked them the rest of the way till crispy. The other method was just a tiny bit less crispy, nut a lot easier. They rolled out the tortilla dough then coated both sides with oil and baked them in the forms. These were actually pretty good, and I'd be satisfied with those too. Just a tiny bit less crispy/flakey. That second method would be better for my tummy. Fried foods are rough on me, so I mostly avoid deep-fried anything. But I did enjoy these tortilla shells enough to eat all of both of mine.
I bet if you didn't have the two to compare, you would have been very happy with the baked ones. But I do love crispy things, so maybe not. :)
DeleteYou're right Live and Learn. In fact, the baked one was really pretty good.
DeleteThat look delicious! Have your daughter's only used homemade tortilla's or store bought? My guess is that homemade is what I see in the photos. I would love eating one of those with all the components.
ReplyDeleteAlice
Hi Alice,
DeleteWe make our own flour tortillas from all-purpose flour, salt, oil, and water. Here's there recipe that I use. I think it's from Laurel's Kitchen or a modified version of her recipe.
https://www.creativesavv.com/2012/06/frugal-meal-solution-homemade-tortillas.html
I love homemade flour tortillas because they tend to be chewier and thinner than store bought ones. And they're pretty easy to make once you get the hang of how wet/dry the dough should be.
Wow, great job DD’s! I had black bean soup in Cabo years ago and loved it so I figured out how to make it. I also make patty melts because they are hard to find in restaurants around here. I make hm eggs Benedict because I rarely go out for breakfast. I’m sure there’s other things, but nothing as creative as tostada bowls lol.
ReplyDeleteDiane
Hi Diane,
DeleteYum, that black bean soup sounds like it was probably very tasty. I love patty melts, too. And you're right, they're rarely on menus. We had lunch in a diner type place while driving to eastern Washington many, many years ago, and that's the last place I saw patty melts on a menu. Do you do a Bearnaise sauce for your eggs Benedict? This is a cheat, and not really the same, but I've made eggs Benedict with cheese sauce in place of Bearnaise. We liked it well-enough.
I used to make my sauce from scratch but now I actually use the winco brand hollandaise sauce packet. I like it better than the name brand and it’s cheap, and it never curdles on me like hm sometimes does lol. I have not made cheese sauce at home for it, but have eaten it that way in restaurants. Definitely prefer hollandaise, but cheese sauce is acceptable.
DeleteWe had a restaurant here that served a really good patty melt, but they closed after Covid. My dd took me there one last time before they closed lol. My kids used to tease me because when we’d go out I either ordered a patty melt or a French dip. Always. I used to tell them well that’s what I like, it’s risky to order something different. Now I make both at home.
Diane
How fun, and how fortuitous to find the tostada forms! I don't try to recreate restaurant meals per se, but I do like to try different recipes, and look up variations on those recipes, to create a more flavorful meal. I tried this recipe about a year ago, https://themodernproper.com/gingery-ground-beef-soboro-donburi, and I thought that it was kinda blah but had promise, so I did a deep dive online to find variations, and I adapted the recipe to be more pleasing to us. I have gotten good feedback on the updated recipe, so I think I've succeeded (bonus that it's pretty easy to throw together).
ReplyDeleteHi Kris,
DeleteYou know what's really a coincidence? I received an Amazon gift card for my birthday. So the afternoon before my daughters went out to the garage sales I was online and looking to see what I might like to get with the GC, and I was looking at both the forms and the deep-fry baskets for making tostada bowls. So I was tickled when I my daughters came home with these and only paid 75 cents!
Thanks for sharing that link. It looks quick and easy to make, with very few ingredients. I'm glad you could tweak it to make it more to your liking.