Do you remember that scene from Pocahontas when the girl shows John Smith the natural beauties of their land and the love-smitten man blurts out:

This place is incredible. And to think we came all this way just to dig it up for gold…
Gold? What is gold? – asks Pocahontas.
You know, it’s yellow. It comes out of the ground. It’s really valuable – explains the man.
Oh! Here we have lots of it. Gold! – and she takes a cob of corn out of her haversack.

Even as a child this scene made quite an impression on me, I felt it had a deeper meaning than just being a simple Disney-pun. Of course, I know that this adaptation of Pocahontas’ story is merely fiction but as a grown-up now I also know that this corn-gold dialogue is quite realistic too. Maize was actually the gold of the Indians, of the Maya and Aztec people, at least, for sure.

And corn boards ships to conquer the world…

The story of corn begins in America, about 6000 years ago. At the time a grass called teosinte grew on the territory of Mesoamerica. People realized that teosinte is nutritious food and started domesticating it. By the time the European explorers and conquerors reached the the American continent, the main staple of the native Mesoamerican people was already maize. The conquerors did not know this crop, since it didn’t exist in Europe yet, but it soon caught their attention. The native people were strong, lean and barely knew what sickness meant. Based on their diets, it seemed logical that maize was very healthy. Our dear explorers wasted no time and brought corn to Europe at once, which, as it turned out, could flourish on the Old Continent too. It spread quickly and slowly started taking over Europe, becoming a staple food in many of its larger countries.

An unexpected turn of events: as corn consumption started spreading, so did an ugly, frightening disease called pellagra. The skin darkens, peels in large layers, the gum wastes away, the patient experiences severe diarrhea, dementia, and literally goes insane. The connection between eating corn and the disease was obvious, they soon realized that the culprit was the “gold” of the New World.

Corn: Gold or curse?

The epidemic naturally caused panic. The less enlightened inhabitants of the Old Continent talked about the corn being contaminated by some disease spread by the Indians, or maybe even that Indian witch doctors put a curse on them through the corn. So from then on, corn was eaten only by those who had nothing else to eat, wealthier people fed their animals with it. Thus the spread of pellagra subsided soon, the population calmed down, and all that remained of the unpleasant story was a warning handed down from fathers to sons: you have to watch out with corn, consume it modestly.

Decades passed, crossing over to America from Europe became more frequent in the meantime. Several medical researchers also sailed across and were surprised to see that maize was still (and had been for centuries) a staple food in Mexico, while pellagra is so rare that it’s basically non-existent.

The pieces of the puzzle came together very slowly , and not until the 1920s. That’s when Joseph Goldberger and his research team proved that pellagra is a deficiency disease: caused by the lack of niacin (namely vitamin B3).

The key to the puzzle, nixtamalization

Unfortunately, there is no data about exactly when and which European traveller luckily realized it at last that descendents of the Aztec and Maya treat corn with an usual technique before milling it into flour. The process is called nixtamalization. The dried corn kernels are cooked in water with ash (nowadays in limewater or white lime) and left to cool and soak for a few hours in the cooking liquid. After this they rinse the kernels thoroughly, wash off what’s left of the ash. The corn you get is nixtamal. Milling this hulled corn, namely nixtamal, we get the valuable masa harina.

The gold of Mexico, masa harina

There is no doubt that masa harina is a wonderful base ingredient. First of all, though we don’t know exactly when nixtamalization was invented, it’s amazing that it was already used on the territory of what’s Guatemala today around 1200-1500 BC. So masa harina counts as an ancient base ingredient. However, the physiological effects of masa harina make it just as interesting as its story. Thanks to nixtamalization, corn becomes more digestible, thus its nutritional content becomes biologically useful and does not only “run through” the digestive tract. In contrast to simple corn (and corn flour), vitamin B3 is not bound up in masa harina and is present in a form that the human body can make use of. This is why pellagra did not affect Mexicans, while the epidemic in Europe was taking its victims. What’s more, masa harina contains everything good that is in corn and corn flour, it’s just more beneficial for your health through masa harina. It is a rich source of vitamins B1 and B2 (the “happiness-vitamins”), vitamins B5 and B6, kalium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc and manganese. Besides these, its texture is also really good. Despite being a gluten-free flour, it’s very easy to work with, you can knead really soft, fluffy dough from it. Last but not least, it has an amazing popcorn smell… hmmm… almost as if you were sitting in the cinema.

We found out about corn in the 15th century, by the 20th century we realized how it can be processed well, and now that we’re in the 21st century we might even slowly start making use of the knowledge, and start using masa harina.

The original corn tortilla recipe

Ingredients (for 4-6 tortillas):
1 cup masa harina
about 2/3 cups of warm water
1-2 pinches of salt

Preparation: Even if you don’t have traditional tortilla baking utensils, you can still prepare this exciting meal. Mix the masa hara with the salt in a bowl and while kneading the down with one hand, very carefully drizzle in the water. Masa harina absorbs water nicely, and the texture of your dough is right if it’s not gluey, but moist all around. When it starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, you can stop adding the water in. Knead a bun-shape from the dough and leave it to rest a bit (5-10 minutes is enough time). Depending on how large you want your tortillas, divide the dough into 4-6 equal parts. Knead smooth dumplings. Take a plastic bag or foil and place the first dumpling on it. Put another piece of foil on top and with the help of a cutting board flatten the dumpling into a round shape. If necessary, you can flatten them some more with a rolling-pin. Pull the pieces of foil from the round sheet of dough (you need the foil so that the tortilla doesn’t stick to the table), and place it in a preheated pancake pan, baking both sides golden brown.

You can use most anything as a filling, which is great, because this way you can fit the corn tortilla into any kind of diet.

Eating is joy, cooking is magic.

With love:
A.