Oxacan Green Corn

[ExtraMSG]

Okay, I decided to get off my lazy ass and get the proportions from the Mexican cookbooks that have it in my collection. (It means I have to get more than one book off the shelf at a time!)

KENNEDY

In both books of hers that have it, she not only doesn't compromise, but doesn't offer an alternative at all. She just says get field corn. A little annoying.

5 C field corn kernels

1/4 whole milk (if necessary)

2 T creme fraiche

BAYLESS

He offers a version that doesn't sound too good. Too similar, imo, to normal tamales with corn added.

The kernels of two ears of sweet corn

2 cups hydrated or fresh masa

ZASLAVSKY

2 cups corn kernels

1/4 C fresh masa OR 3 T flour and 1/4 C masa harina with 1/4 C water

POORE

Kernels of 6 ears of corn

1/3 C masa harina

[esperanza]

I think rancho got out there in his corn and foundered.

This has all been so interesting. On reflection, I think Fifi's right, American sweet corn won't do it. Iowa field corn probably would, if grabbed at the right moment.

I was in the local pasturería (feed store) a little earlier today, looking at dried corn kernels just because of this thread. Sheesh, we are all obsessed.

I was smiling and thinking about all of you, folks I don't even know, people from a cyber world beyond the ken of the woman waiting on me, while I'm standing in this dinky little hay-smelling place buying Whiskas dry cat food a granel (in bulk). It felt like when worlds collide.

At any rate, none of the dried corn was green and none had a dent. It was all either white or red, for nixtamal and pozole.

EMSG, the thought of adding eggs to the uchepo recipe sounds not quite right. Corn starch might work. I want a full report, and I also want a FedEx package of emerald green dent corn.

Dontcha just love the Internet?

[esperanza]

WAIT!

I have a way better idea: ROAD TRIP!

All of you come on down here, we'll go to Michoacán and eat uchepos till we founder in them.

[caroline]

Yup, with Esperanza I'm not sure that Mexican kinds of maize map very well on to American. I'm not sure most kinds used here are dent at all. I can't lay my hands on an article by Ricardo Salvador at U. Iowa at the moment but if I remember right, he stresses that Mexican varieties are much more floury.

In fact that's one of the things at stake in the maize debates at the moment.

Rachel

[fifi]

I am certainly no expert but Rachel is right. Here in the US we refer to dent corn as the starchier kind because that is about all we have. The variation of types of corn we grow is dismal compared to Mexico. There is the dent corn grown for industrial purposes and animal feed. Then there are a bunch of varieties of sweet corn grown for the "vegetable" market.

I haven't seen the corn that I have eaten in Mexico before cooking for corn on the cob or ever after it has been dried. I have never seen the field corn, dent corn, whatever for sale at markets here in the fresh state for eating. My dad and I would get it at a farmer's road side stand outside of Luling TX many years ago. Mother used to scold us for buying "that old field corn" but we loved it. Years later the Mexican corn reminded me about that corn because it was starchier, but it wasn't really the same.

I do think that the US field corn might have enough starch for the uchepos. If only we could get our hands on it.

[ExtraMSG]

Several of the recipes I looked at added baking powder.

I've had uchepos in the US at taquerias that were owned by michoacanos. I assume they used sweet corn to make them. Kennedy recommends talking to a farmer who grows corn for cattle feed.

It's not corn season here, yet, I don't think. But once it is, maybe I'll be able to talk to some of the farmer's at the various farmer's markets and see if they grow any odd varieties. In fall, we usually get some odd varieties of corn in places like Whole Foods.

[caroline]

Goodness, this is a huge topic. Uchepos must belong to old Purepecha cookery (that's the cookery of the people who lived in what is now Michoacán and who hated the Aztecs). It's an indigenous holdover, and all the better.

Even a book like La Cocina de las Abejas (Cookery of the Busy Bees) a middle class effort from Patzcuaro in Michoacán does not have a recipe for uchepos. This although even in Guanajuato 150 miles away we have Michoacán restaurants dishing up delicious uchepos.

Neither is there a recipe in Josefina de Leon, who was the first to begin collecting regional recipes in the 50s-70s. And only one for a sweet uchepo with piloncillo (raw sugar) in Patricia van Rhijn's Cocina del Maíz.

But fresh ground maize dishes have to have been early. I think, Shelora, that it might be possible to tell a story about nixtamalization that went like this. Mexicans of the central plateau ground fresh grains for tamales (uchepos), toasted grains for pinole (still done), dry grains for atole (still done).

Adding flavor meant adding salt. But salt in Mexico comes mainly from (1) ashes of certain palms and (2) old deposits around salt lakes, common in Puebla and San Luis Potosi for example. Both are a mixture of salts, the latter fizzes when you add it to water.

Good gracious taste and fizzy life too. And then they discovered a third great fact, the ground grains made a paste (masa) and could be rolled out in to a dough.

The rest of the Americas missed out on this (sad and the question is why). But in northern Argentina, for example, it's like in most of the rest of the Americas: uchepo by another name and pozole by another name

Sorry to go on but I'm sufficiently nutty (maizey?) to get wound up about such things. On them rest the history of the world,

Rachel

[ExtraMSG]

Rachel, it seems unlikely to me that uchepos would have been a staple. If they were made early, I would think they would have been a special occasion food only made during the harvest. Partially because of storage issues, but also because non-nixtamalized maize isn't that healthy. The Michoacanos who would have tried it as a staple would have had a hard time surviving unless maybe they had a source of vitamins that the rest of the pre-conquest Mexicans didn't have.

Also, why do you assume that Michoacan is the source of the dish? I mentioned that Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru all have their own version. Plus, I've eaten such things at Salvadorean restaurants. I imagine that some sort of fresh corn dish like a tamale was made anywhere there was corn.

I've got a couple books on pre-conquest food that I'll check. One includes a lot of recipes.

[rancho_gordo]

Gee, a fellow leaves for a few hours to spend a day at the beach and look at the conversation he misses!

Says Fifi:

Just for clarification... rancho's green corn shouldn't need any additional corn starch or other additives. It is dent corn and should work with esperanza's recipe as is.

plus, the original seed is from Mexico, so it should be great. The kernels are green but maybe the slaked corn will be another color or some shade of white. We'll see! If it's unslaked and used fresh, it may also be another color. I know the red pozole isn't so pretty once it's cooked.

XtraMSG says:

It's not corn season here, yet, I don't think. But once it is, maybe I'll be able to talk to some of the farmer's at the various farmer's markets and see if they grow any odd varieties.

I hope you have better luck than here. One of the reasons I grew it (and really, almost everything I grow) is because I couldn't find it from someone else. At least here in California, corn is very taxing and expensive to grow and the customers expect it to be cheap. Market farmers grow it to attract customers but often write it off as a loss leader. It's much fussier than a lot of other things. So when I asked a few years ago about getting a less sweet corn, the farmers would laugh. They had no interest in doing anything other than the bland candy that people seem to want. Even the heirloom sweets were of little interest.

Several stalks have ears (they seem to be two to a stalk) and are in the process of pollinating. I have my bag of cal and a big appetite waiting for them! I'll keep you posted.

[ExtraMSG]

Rancho, do you have a calendar of when your produce is in season?

[caroline]

Rancho, Why is corn so hard to grow in California? Like others, I really look forward to hearing more about your experiments.

Extra MSG, Loved your comments. I'm not sure I wanted to say that uchepos were a staple in the sense that they were consumed year round (though if you could get two maize harvests they might have been more than an occasional treat). Nor do I want to say that th Central Highlands of Mexico were necessarily the source for ground or pounded fresh maize. As you say, that is a fairly obvious thing to do. But that said, I am always astonished at how what seems obvious in retrospect isn't to users. Just consider how differnt European and Sudanese ways of dealing with maize are from Mesoamerican.

But a few random and not necessarily consistent thoughts. People in Mesoamerica tried an amazing range of combinations of techniques with maize. Perhaps there is a principle that the longer a foodstuff has been used somewhere the more things will be tried.

I do have the impression that many archaeologists believe that nixtamalization was Mesoamerican and it spread from there. I don't have the impression that tortilla making spread very far south or north. I don't have the impression that the metate was used as much in Peruvian regions. Soups and atoles seem much more widespread than more complex uses.

And I have the impression that although nixtamalizing does improve the nutritive quality of maize, many peoples (probably including early Mesoamericans) accepted it as a staple without this technique. And that of course often had appalling consequences as in the US, Italy, etc.

But this is all just speculation,

Rachel

[ExtraMSG]

I need some better sources on Mexican and Central/South American food history. All I can do is guess. I know that potatoes, however, were a staple for the Incans, so they might not need to go through the complexities of nixtamalization. I have no idea what ancient Argentinians and Brazilians ate. I imagine many Brazilians were able to stick to the bounty of the Amazon. The Native Americans had things like bison in the plains and salmon and marine mammals in the NW. I imagine that surplus of meats and fish that may have also been present in eastern South America may have required less creative uses of maize. But again, I'm totally guessing.

[rancho_gordo]

XtraMSG:

Rancho, do you have a calendar of when your produce is in season?

No, but everything is coming up early this year. Warm, dry Spring!

Caoline asked:

Rancho, Why is corn so hard to grow in California? Like others, I really look forward to hearing more about your experiments.

It's not so hard as much as everything else pretty much grows itself. It takes more fertilizer and water and it gets worms. We have no rain here from early May to October so it has to be irrigated. After tomatoes start fruiting you drastically cut the water and chiles can take a certain amount of abuse, some think get hotter with neglect. And the yield per square foot is low.

There are regions in the delta, below the levees where the grow the corn and never have to water it because it's below sea level. My mother lives there and never has to water her vegetables but I'll take my tomatoes over hers.

[shelora]

I'm with Esperanza - a tour of Mexico, eating tamales, uchepos, corundas in all their shapes and flavours. Then maybe a cooking class over a weekend, taking corn from field to table, how to make a masa from scratch and then tamale making.

[caroline]

I see Rancho. And I suppose you're too far north for it to flourish in the winter when there is rain. Here's it's planted round about now when the ground is good and wet enough to see it through and it's harvested around November.

Best,

Rachel

[caroline]

Extra MSG, Just came across a book on the history of Peruvian food that was published by the University of San Martin de Porres in 1999. The opening sentence, roughly translated, says "our knowledge of the culinary customs of the prehispanic peoples of the andes and of their agriculture is very scanty." It depressingly goes on to say that we know much less than about Mexico and that although recent archaeology is helping we are still pretty ignorant. Rats,

Rachel

[loki]

I know this is pretty late in the replies.... However I learned of green corn tamales from a book I got in the Airport in El Paso on mexican food. It said that green meant young, and that these were a speciality made during the time when field corn was in it's green stage. And it's pretty easy to make. I made them with sweet corn at the time, though it is no longer easy to find the 'right' kind of sweet corn now. The best corn to use would be field corn, not in the milk or sweet stage but later, still starchy, but not yet dried.

I'm sure it was scraped off and pounded - or perhaps the scraping, if done not to preserve kernals was enough to break them up. I scraped off the kernals and put them in a blender. Blend them well, and add salt to taste. These are not filled as it's nearly impossible using a masa so thin. But it said that grated cheese and or roasted peeled chiles are added sometimes. My masa sweet corn was pretty runny and they were difficult to 'fill'. But the recipe said this would be the case. I pretty much made the cases put them upright in a pot, and spooned the filling into them. When cooked, the tamales set as there was enough starch in the runny masa - like custard.

However, the newly developed super sweet, and sugary enhanced sweet corns popular now don't work. I've tried. They may work if left to become overmature... But there is just not enough starch in them to set properly.

So you probably have to seek out field corn. I'm trying to round some up now. The kind the original poster grows probably would work just find.

I doubt the 'masa' would freeze well, but the cooked tamales would freeze very well. And the work involved to set everything up - is more efficient if you make a hundred and freeze them.

[rancho_gordo]

As the original poster and grower of the corn, I can tell you the corn was literally green, it wasn't just young. There are lots of regional corn types and chiles particular to Oaxaca and this was one of them, although I've been to Oaxaca three times since the original post and I've never seen it there.

The thread meanders to fresh-corn tamales instead of a more traditional masa from dried corn and cal.

This was a starchy field corn. We sell a white field corn from Jalisco at ranchogordo.com that we grow on the delta. I just got word that Ms Kennedy tried it and came away saying, "Very nice!"

[AAQuesada]

Hi Rancho Gordo! So what did you end up doing with it? I recently found some at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, grown by Colman family Farms and was told by a Oaxacan accuaintance that they use it for Atole and call it Maizono. 

Am going to play around with it, but wanted to see if anyone has Ideas. 

[Consider the Sauce]

When fresh corn is ground and made into "masa" and mixed with other ingredients such as butters and sugar- the resulting sweet tamales are called "Tamal de elote."