My Grandmother’s Tortillas Were the Best. Try Them Yourself.

Credit…Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Heather Greene.

My grandmother’s comal was only about six inches in diameter. It was as central in her home, tucked behind pecan trees and loblolly pines heavy with Spanish moss in Live Oak, Fla., as the amber ashtrays and pickled hot peppers in Mason jars on her dining-room table.

This house was full of “Hee Haw” and the Mandrell Sisters and Ray Charles and old dogs that smelled worse than they looked. It was also full of chili verde and carne adovada, homegrown chile de árbol, jalapeño and serranos for pickling or eating fresh with everything and my grandmother’s tortillas, fresh off her comal, the cast-iron griddle from which she flipped the most memorable food of my childhood.

Recipe: Flour Tortillas With Honey and Butter

In the Live Oak days, back in the early 1980s, I would watch as she warmed the stove and gathered her tools: the plastic bowl meant just for making tortillas, her rolling pin and the plate to rest the rolled dough. These flour tortillas were our daily bread, whipped up in a matter of moments. The kneading and shaping, rolling and shifting were moves she had been doing since she was tall enough to reach a countertop, about as big as I was when I would attach myself to her side and wait for my hot tortilla.

In my memory, my Nana, Mary Gutierrez, wore a pair of baby blue polyester pants that hugged her hips, thick the way mine are now, her body full of life. Before she would start rolling the first tortilla, she would quickly touch the comal with her middle finger, to feel exactly how long she had before the temperature was correct. She would roll the first tortilla, touch the comal again and flip it on with her whole hand.