The lag time from production line to shelf is negligible, the seconds it takes to extend an arm and drop the packed tortillas onto a table. Some shoppers pick their tortillas based on temperature: the warmer they feel, the fresher they are. Others lob questions to the men and women on the factory floor — “Was this really made today?” The operation is as unusual as it is entertaining, like watching oranges being picked, squeezed and bottled right before the eyes. It unfolds daily, over back-to-back eight-hour shifts at a market named Ranch, but nicknamed “rancho” by the Hispanics who make up the bulk of its clientele. “Can I have three pounds of masa?” Abigail Tome, 25, asked one of the factory’s workers, who handed her a bag of dough made of soaked and ground corn, which is used for tortillas and also other foods, like tamales. It is similar to the dough she used to make at home when she lived in Veracruz, Mexico, and still had time to make tortillas from scratch, Ms. Tome said. It is just made faster, though, because of the machines and the many hands the factory has to mix it up. Tortillas are a Mexican staple of transnational appeal here, bridging divisions carved by Arizona’s tough stance on immigration and reaching far beyond Latin American borders. The factory, at the Ranch Market store on North 16th Street, employs a pair of Iraqi refugees to whom flour tortillas have become a replacement for the flat bread known as khubz. There are also Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and, of course, Mexicans manning the machines like the rounder, which turns the masa into balls that are then pressed and cooked in 500-degree ovens at a rate of eight dozen disks a minute. Refugees from Somalia buy Ranch Market tortillas as a substitute for a pancake-like bread called canjeelo. Koreans have taken to using them to wrap pieces of spicy barbecued pork, like a taco. Foodies like them because they are the closest thing to an authentic tortilla that they can find at a supermarket here. “I’ve never been to Mexico, but whenever I think of how homemade tastes, I think of this stuff,” said Bryan Davis, 28, placing a pack of fresh tortillas in his shopping basket. Among Mexicans, tortilla allegiances vary based on the length of time they have lived in this country and where in Mexico they come from. Jose Loera, senior director of the tortilleria, as the factory is known, said those from the south prefer corn over flour, a favorite of northern Mexicans like himself. New immigrants regardless of precedence often stick with corn, Mr. Loera said, perhaps because it is the type of tortilla most often made at home. But it does not take long until they change allegiances, he said. Flour tortillas last longer in the fridge and they are more malleable, suiting tacos, quesadillas, burritos and its American equivalent, the wrap. There are seven Ranch Markets here, as well as two apiece in New Mexico and El Paso. Each has its own tortilla factory, which altogether produce 2.2 million tortillas a week, of various flavors — like spinach, wheat, spicy tomato and chili — and sizes. The store on North 16th Street is the only one whose factory produces both corn and flour tortillas, in a nod to the diversified public it serves. At one point, it churned out cactus tortillas called nopalitos, after the cactus leaf that was its main ingredient, the nopal. The leaves were too fibrous, though, and just would not stick to the dough, so they were discontinued. The factory also gave up on producing blue-corn tortillas, which Mr. Loera said are very popular in the Ranch Market store in Albuquerque. “In Arizona,” he went on, “tortilla is something that’s either yellow or white.”
No comments:
Post a Comment