Discrimination: Using the Not-So-Simple Grindstone to Make Multiple Maize Dishes
Sometimes it is suggested that the poor are so absorbed by simply getting enough to eat that, unlike the rich, they have little discrimination where the taste of their food is concerned. This has always bothered me.
Metate
Consider those who depend on maize or corn for most of their calories and who use what is often called the “simple” grindstone to prepare the maize. What can be done with this simple tool and a few extras like a little naturally occurring alkaline salt (tequisquite) or cal (quicklime), a couple of pots, a sieve, and a griddle is impressive.
Margarita Muñoz Ramírez started grinding at the age of twelve in a small village on the borders of the states of Querétaro and Guanajuato in central Mexico. She described what she could make to me in the mid 1990s when she was in her early 20s. A “pass” is one movement of a handful of maize from the upper to the lower end of the grindstone (metate).
Please understand that I am reporting practice in just one small village in Mexico in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Names and details of processing are very fluid over time and over space so if you have studied grinding in another part of Mexico, you may have different data.
As to discrimination, particularly for readers not familiar with Mexican cooking, each of these products has a totally distinct taste and/or texture.
They also have very different uses. Atole is often taken for breakfast (as Americans might take oatmeal or cereal). Anything made with fresh corn is a seasonal treat. Pinole, which is delicious, is a travel food (and one that Americans picked up for frontier expeditions). Gorditas, usually stuffed, are what you make when you can’t face making tortillas. Tortillas are the workhorse eaten with main dishes, used as a utensil for main dishes, rolled around stuffings, and turned into lots of leftover dishes. Even more labor intensive tamales and pozole tend to be for special occasions (or bought on the street).
Moreover, every product can be varied in numerous ways by adding flavoring or filling or changing the wrapping.Every maize product from the grindstone remains superior to the same product produced by modern machinery, at least if the grinder is expert, just because she has so much control over the process.
Finally, Margarita finished high school and took a job as a secretary. Although I’m glad she taught me what a keenly honed sense of taste and texture she and her family brought to maize cookery, I’m even gladder she is no longer grinding every day.
Note. Edited to describe the products more fully.
- Notes and Queries: Dishwasher (Human), Anglo-Saxon Spelt, Shave Ice, Plantain Recipes, Cricket Flour, and San Pascual.
- My Attempt to Understand Irish Food History 1: Country House Cuisine
Fascinating! As I embarked on the adventure of making my own masa: finding the right kind of dried corn, cooking it with the right amount of cal for the appropriate amount of time, grinding the wet nixtamal was the greatest challenge. The metate is such a simple solution.
Wet grinding is really tricky, which is why it wasn’t backwardness but a technological challenge that meant that Mexican women kept grinding until very recently. The metate really works well. The problem is that it is really demanding if you are to feed many people.
When I went to cooking school in Oaxaca, we spent a day with a group of Zapotec women who taught us, among other things, how to grind on the metate. It was hard work. I can see why Margarita would willingly sacrifice some flavor in order to avoid the “daily grind” — and I think that is a sacrifice pretty universally selected when a chance for a less wearying approach is offered.
I agree about it being universally selected. I’d just add that those who are rich enough not to have to make the choice pretty universally condemn it.
Absolutely right. And even those who are not wealthy, if their lives are far enough removed from the production of food, they tend to criticize it. Personally, I think choosing freedom from mind-numbing drudgery is a good thing. Then, if you have the money, you can pay huge amounts to someone with a nice restaurant to fix things the old-fashioned way.
Exactly.
Rachel, once again, a brilliant insight. I have found in my travels in Asia that the traditional methods of making food are stunning in their originality and inventiveness. Consider the process of making miso or even soy sauce in traditional Japan. Consider the use of the three-tiered steamer in China, in a culture where the peasants had to conserve fuel, because of the expense. Arranging foods in order of their cooking time, from the least amount of time down to the most amount of time and heat, is a brilliant solution.
So agree. “Food preparation techniques are one of the finest human achievements” is rapidly becoming my mantra.
Rachel,
Very interesting. Have always wondered about linguistic origins of the word maize. Having done some research into ancient Greek origins of words for barley, wheat, breads, I have come up with the following which I excerpt from my unpublished work:.
” FROM MYTH TO THE FIRST PROCESSED FOOD
They will prepare their respective flours from barley and wheat
Baking bread from the wheat and kneading fine cakes from the barley.
Plato’s Republic, Book 2, 372a
As revealed in the myth of Demeter, our civilization has always been identified with the cultivation of cereals. This is true of every important civilization throughout history. The systematic use and cultivation of barley and wheat began about 10,000 years ago. Before that, evidence has been found at various sites that wild barley was collected in the Middle East before 15,000 BC and in southern Greece about 11,000 BC at the Franchthi Cave in the Eastern Peloponnese. Gradually over a long period of time man ̶ or perhaps we should say woman ̶ learned to use and eventually cultivate grain. She gathered plants and the seeds of wild grasses (cereal grains) to supplement the meat her mate brought back from the hunt. This collective “she” eventually learned how to remove the outer husks of the grains by pounding or parching. Pounding was hard work but parching was easier. Archaeologists believe that ovens were perhaps first invented to dry foods and/or parch grain while baking bread and roasting food in them came later.
The inner-core had to be ground between two stones to make the first barley meal. Once separated, even then it was not edible. Perhaps by accident someone discovered that soaking this rough stuff in water and kneading it into flat grain-paste cakes made a more palatable food that not only filled the stomach but was actually quite tasty if not nourishing. The whole process was neatly summarized by Pliny in his Natural History:
The Greeks soak the barley-grain in water, leave it overnight to dry, and the next day roast and then grind it.
If this way of treating and consuming cereal grains seems primitive to us, we must remember that it was also a revolutionary development in the evolution of human nourishment for it represents the first processed food in history! And wouldn’t you know – the Greeks had a word for it! This food was called maza (from the ancient Greek MASSO, to work or knead with the hands.) When paste (dough) was sprinkled with salt, to dry and thus preserve the product, it became pasteos or pastos, both from ancient Greek PASSO, to sprinkle. This very ancient word is important because from it modern words like pasta, pâte, paste, pasty, and pastry are derived. Maza remained the staple food of the masses in both ancient Greece and Rome. The flour or meal used to make it was known as al-phi-ta while the ancient Greek word for barley grain itself was krithe. It is probably no coincidence that the first letter of the Greek alphabet is alpha, and alphita, the primordial cereal food.”
I was wondering if you happen to know the origins of the word maize, does it derive from spanish {i.e. which means it might be connect thru ancient sources with ancient Greek] or was it an Aztec word? At any rate it certainly is not by chance that both words are so similar.
As to the poor, I have found that rural Greek cookery depends on the ingenuity of those who with very few ingredient managed to come us up with some of the tastiest concoctions you can imagine. So I also disagree with what your beginning statement says [poor with no discrimination], it is definitely untrue. Even in ancient Greece there were hundreds of kinds of breads, each with a different name, and of course cereals formed the basis of diets around the world. Bread holds/held such an important place in the Greek diet that it is used as a religious offering in “rite of passage” rituals even today [birth, baptism, marriage, funeral, etc]. Dough is used to make symbolic forms on the loaves,[flowers, leaves, fruits, animals, etc] which also have ancient roots. Anyone who studies the history of humanity’s food would know that the not so fortunate were/are vastly more imaginative than many modern day cooks/chefs who have had all the gruntwork done on their bottled., packaged ingredients which they simply assemble and pop into their ovens or microwaves!
The Greeks believed that Demeter, the cereal goddess [Ceres is her Latin name] taught mankind to cultivate both wheat and barley. Would appreciate learning about ancient Aztec or Mexican myths regarding maize [and/or other cereals] including what they were called in the ancient languages.
Hope your summer is going well. It is hot here.
Regards, Linda Makris
Well, a quick google says it is from the Taino, a Caribbean language, though so many food etymologies are highly dubious. There are many myths about maize in indigenous American cultures and a huge, huge literature on them. What I find a bit odd is that there is much less interest in how maize is actually used.
Pingback: Discrimination: Using the Not-So-Simple Grindst...