Tortillas de Elote

So as I was leaving Professora Francis's house on Friday night, she asked me jokingly at what time she should be expecting me the following morning to help her make Tortilla de Elote (cornbread from scratch). I excitedly responded that I'd love to help and asked what time she wanted me. So on Saturday morning, I woke up at the same time I do for school everyday, and I was at her house showered and ready to work at 6:30.

First things first...luckily for me she offered me a huge plate of gallo pinto, cuajada, and tortilla as soon as I walked in (Nica rice and beans, awesome homemade Nica cheese, and hot homemade tortilla that she bought from her neighbor who sells them every morning.) Oh, and coffee, of course.

After breakfast, the work began. I tried to control my reaction when she showed me the two giant sacos (think potato sack races) full of corn on the cob that we were going to “desgranar” - remove each grain of corn from each and every cob. We each took chairs into her second room and she shucked the first ear and threw it in a bucket. As I went to shuck some ears of my own, she said it would be a better idea if I just started to desgranar. She handed me a knife with a blade the size of my forearm and then realized she'd have to show me exactly how to go about manipulating the weapon against my poor little piece of corn. I watched closely as she wedged the blade between two rows of kernels and popped out the first section of one row using the knife as a lever. (Hello "small machines" science lessons!) She continued down the row and then moved fluidly between the second and third rows, then between the third and fourth, etc. All I could think was that it seemed like a painfully slow process – especially considering each ear of corn has about 16 rows of kernels. Luckily, just as a grabbed my knife to get started, two neighbors came over to help us as well, so we threw on some music and really got down to it. I was given a huge bowl/pot thingy to put on my lap to collect my kernels, and just under two hours later, the four of us had turned two sacos of corn on the cob into a 5 gallon bucket full of corn kernels. (I dis-grained about 40 or 50 ears of corn all by myself - therefore filling my cauldron with corn kernels with only one cut on my middle finger and a few calluses on the hand that was constantly manipulating the blade.)

So what do you do with over 40 pounds of corn kernels? Well you separate them into two portions...one to make “simple,” or sugarless batches, and the other to make the good stuff. To the simple batch, we added a little salt and crumbled up cheese, and to the other, salt, cheese, broken up cinnamon sticks, and cut up ginger. Then we walked the two buckets of mixed ingredients – one held on my hip like a toddler, and the other on the head of Dona Coco, Francis's mom – down to the “molino,” aka house where a guy has a machine that grinds up the corn into masa, which I guess is cornmeal?

Aside: While we were at the molino, Francis stayed home to heat up the wood burning brick oven, which was therefore nice and hot by the time we got everything set up to go in.

We walked the buckets back to the house and to the flavorful batch we added tons of sugar, vanilla, the watery part of separated milk (I don't know how you say that in English), sour cream (which is in liquid form here), and butter. Then, to both batches we added baking soda.

We then lined the deep baking trays with banana leaves and filled them with the masa. These, after baking for a few minutes in the infernal oven, came out like what we call cornbread back in the States. Dona Coco also used a small bucket's worth of masa to make Bollos Asados, which uses the same exact masa, but gets baked into little loaves. To do this, she filled a cut up banana leaf with a cup full of masa and magically folded the leaf around it into a little envelope before the liquidy dough had time to escape. These little pockets of heaven were then put onto trays and baked, and came out as much drier bready loaves that turn a simple cup of coffee into pure pleasure.

So it was a long day, but thanks to the company, the music, and the constant supply of good food and frescos, it was awesome!! (Although, I am assured every single day here that I'm not cut out to be a housewife. There will never be a day when I wake up with the “ganas,” or desire, to spend the entire day baking/cooking/cleaning/washing clothes/babysitting etc. Regardless of what I'm willing to do here as a learner and an appreciative visitor, I'm still as lazy as always in my own house and I look for shortcuts whenever possible.  Whoever I end up with better be ready for 50/50 housework distribution!)