Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • It begins with a large tortilla.

  • Cut a strip from the middle where it's widest.

  • And free this long rectangle from the useless wedges

  • that surround it.

  • This is how we start our journey towards creating

  • the perfect food.

  • The hardest part is folding an angle of equal thirds.

  • But if you folded a piece of paper

  • into thirds for a letter or a pamphlet,

  • you know the principal, approximate, and then

  • adjust until you reach equality.

  • In the case of the tortilla, to get an equilateral triangle,

  • you fold an angle rather than an edge.

  • Be sure your folds meet at a point.

  • One corner of a triangle.

  • Unlike paper, this soft and delicious tortilla

  • is forgiving, adjusting easily rather than

  • creasing and crumpling.

  • Continue folding one triangle on top of another.

  • Pinch each fold to give it a crease.

  • 10 triangles are necessary.

  • Remove the extra.

  • Arrange the strip of triangles into a hexagon.

  • Note that the folds naturally want

  • to go the same way you creased them.

  • This will help you to arrange the overlap so that it

  • is symmetric, woven together in the same way you would fold

  • the flaps on top of a box to support each other.

  • In paper, I might use 9 triangles, and then

  • a piece of tape.

  • For tortilla, use 10 and attach the first to the last.

  • Score the tortilla lightly with a knife to ruff it up.

  • And then use your fingers to wet it with water.

  • The water combines with the flour in the tortilla.

  • And by pressing the triangles firmly to one another,

  • they are effectively glued together.

  • Thus, a tortilla hexaflexagon is created.

  • It can be flexed by pinching two triangles together and pushing

  • in the opposite side to get a flat three armed shape.

  • Then opening up the inside.

  • However, it is imperfect.

  • For it is not yet delicious.

  • Luckily, there are several sophisticated tools

  • with which to remedy this problem.

  • The first of which is guacamole.

  • I start with the easily spreadable ingredients,

  • which can be folded flat into the hexaflexagon.

  • Flex it by lifting the three parts with the flappy folded

  • creases and fold them to the inside.

  • Then the bottom can be opened up.

  • And the flexagon is once again ready to be

  • piled with delicious ingredients.

  • The precious guacamole being stowed safely within the folds.

  • After adding beans and cheese, your hexaflexamexagon

  • is ready for consumption.

  • To eat, flex only halfway and bite the delicious exposed

  • triangular pockets of flex mex perfection.

  • As you can see, the ingredients tend

  • to leak slightly out of the folds of the flexagon.

  • This is expected and unavoidable,

  • as the nature of the burrito is to be a delicious leaking mess

  • regardless of whether it is cylindrical or hexaflexagonal.

  • As your next flex mex project, consider the humble crane

  • guarding her flavorful nest.

It begins with a large tortilla.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it