'Reacher' and Tortillas
A big boy and bacon-based bread (for burritos)
Welcome to the Double Feature! Each week I write one thing about entertainment and one thing about food. They’re not related, unless for some reason you think they are, in which case it was definitely on purpose.
I watched: the first two episodes of Reacher
Two episodes is both not enough to judge a show on, and more than enough to judge a show on. Nothing drives me up a wall more than when someone recommends me a show with the caveat that “it doesn’t get good until the second season.” I appreciate your recommendation, but if that’s the case, then I will be skipping straight to season two and finding something else to do with the full day’s worth of time that I save, thank you.
Reacher, the new Amazon Prime show based on Lee Child’s novels, wastes no time getting good. Just in the first episode, mysterious tough guy Jack Reacher rolls into town, gets arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, goes to prison, gouges out a dude’s eye, stands a full head taller than everyone else on the show, dispenses justice, and plays by his own rules. It rips.
This isn’t Hollywood’s first adaptation of Child’s Jack Reacher novels. Tom Cruise produced and starred in two Jack Reacher movies that were a great showcase of him taking jobs from hard-working stunt performers and sprinting as fast as he can. Bookreaders were up in arms because of a crucial flaw in the movies: Jack Reacher is big while Tom Cruise is small.
The new show solves this critical casting error. Alan Ritchson, the new actor who plays Reacher, is fucking enormous. The show lets us know this too, by having him tower over the rest of the cast while baring his biceps, and also by making sure that every five minutes a character mentions how big Reacher is.
And like Reacher the character, Reacher the show is big, straightforward, and no nonsense. The Jack Reacher books (I haven’t read them, but now I’m interested) are quintessential airport novels with easily digestible prose, so the television adaptation strives to go down just as smooth. Any source of friction that would prevent you from enjoying Reacher kicking ass in order to solve the case has been removed. To that end, even the sets are sparsely decorated, serving only as locations for Reacher to speak brusquely to, receive exposition from, or kick the asses of the other characters on screen.
Reacher is good dumb fun that had me repeatedly pumping my (normal-sized) fist at how good and dumb it is. The show is a true heir to the 90s dad thriller throne, and I can’t wait to see what else the big boy gets up to.
I made: Flour Tortillas
I have once again made something from scratch that is abundantly and cheaply available at stores and restaurants everywhere. It is my passion and I will not be stopped.
Last week, I wrote about making popcorn, something that might seem a little complicated but is actually very easy. Flour tortillas are kind of the opposite. They seem (and are!) very simple to make, but take some doing. Somehow I always forget how much time they take. I refuse to learn that turning a simple bacon and egg breakfast into breakfast tacos turns a 10-minute meal into a much more involved hour-long one. But I’ve never once regretted it!
The recipe I use is pretty much a straight rip of one Christina Tosi did for her early-pandemic Instagram Live bake club, but inspired by this recipe from Austin chefs Rene Ortiz and Laura Sawicki, I use bacon fat for the fat in the recipe. They’re delicious: light but still rich, sturdy but not chewy. They’re worth the work every time. If you don’t save your bacon fat, it’s worth doing so for these tortillas! Also if you’re vegetarian/vegan, vegetable shortening will work in its place, you just need a fat that’s solid at room temperature.
Here’s how I make them!
You’ll need:
A pan of some kind
2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
3 tablespoons of bacon fat (room temp or colder)
1/2 cup (and maybe an extra splash or two) of ice water
Plastic wrap
Rolling pin
Vegetable oil
Here’s what you’ll do:
Whisk together the flour and salt in a medium bowl.
Add the bacon fat and ice water, mix together with a fork until a shaggy dough forms.
Working in the bowl, knead the dough with your hand a bit, until it loses most of its shagginess.
Dump the contents of the bowl (there will still be some loose flour) onto a clean countertop or cutting board. Knead a few more times, adding a small amount of water (just a couple teaspoons or so) if needed, to form a smooth dough.
Form the dough into a ball. Using a knife or bench scraper, cut into equal wedges, depending on how big you want your tortillas to be:
4 wedges for burrito-sized tortillas
8-12 wedges for taco-sized tortillas
Shape the wedges into balls. Dust your work space with flour, place a dough ball on the floured surface, and drape with a piece of plastic wrap. Through the plastic wrap, roll the dough into a flat circle about an eighth of an inch thick.
Note: I’ve never made a perfectly circular tortilla once. Real tortillerias/restaurants use a tortilla press! If you have one, def use that instead.
Heat your pan on medium-high with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Wipe the oil around the pan using a paper towel, leaving a thin, even layer of oil behind.
Working one at a time, cook your tortillas a couple minutes per side, until they look like flour tortillas, with some light brown spots all over.
Enjoy!
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Loved it all again! I especially liked the instruction given to cook the flour tortilla until it looks like a flour tortilla. So visual!
And I have to see the big boy Reacher. I will watch anything that will make me feel petite and slender.