Growing up in Arizona and now living in southern California my belly is
no stranger to Mexican food, and one of my favorite dishes
is a simple quesadilla. Cheese, tortilla that's about it. What makes
quesadillas so interesting from a historical perspective is that they are
the perfect combination of pre-Columbian cuisine and
post-Colombian cuisine meeting for one magical dish. So today
using a recipe from 1831 i'm going to show you how to make
quesadillas or sifted quesadillas and we'll focus on the pre-Columbian
ingredient corn tortillas. Esta vez en Tasting History.
So I am totally geeking out today because
I got to work on this episode with a historian
hero of mine Professor Ken Albala. Ken is a professor at the University of the
Pacific, and has authored many books on food history
which have appeared as sources here on Tasting History.
Most recently he created a series of videos for the great courses called
"Cooking Across the Ages" and i'm going to link to that
in the description. You should definitely go check it out he is a fount of
knowledge, and I'm just so grateful that he agreed
to work with me on today's recipe from the 1831
"El Cosinero Mejicano" for quesadillas cernidas or
sifted quesadillas. Take it away Ken. "Sifted quesadillas. Put your corn to cook
with water, being washed and let it dry.
Grind it and sift. Mix with the dough a little melted lard, salt, and a little
of the settled tequesquite so the dough is workable.
Sprinkle with flour and form into a wheel,
well flattened in the way you like, and put in the middle a little aged
cheese, or fresh, according to the preference of each one.
Fold over the edges so they stick. At this point put them
into very hot lard, bathing continuously each so they puff up. Take them out and
drain them and eat them fresh." So it's definitely
recognizable as a quesadilla but it's also
a little bit different than one that you'll find in a Mexican restaurant at
least here in America, or most parts of the
world. Those are usually made with flour tortillas,
and heated on a comal, or just a flat surface
rather than frying them, but these are fried in lard and you
can't be mad at that. Also the recipe mentions an ingredient that
I'm guessing most people haven't heard of, I had never heard of it and it's
called tequesquite. What is tequesquite, Ken?
It's basically sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate. It's like baking
soda basically, but it's got sodium chloride and sodium sulfate in it so it
smells a little bit like sulfur. Sometimes it's used to soften
beans the way you use baking soda but it's also a natural leavener.
So that explains why the recipe says these quesadillas should puff up a
little bit. Now we're going to make two slightly
different versions. He's going to start off with full kernels of corn just
like the recipe says. I'm going to make a slightly easier
version that is also mentioned in the book which
uses masa harina that has already been pre-ground, and if you're going to make
them at home i'm going to guess this is probably how
you're going to do it. That said you can actually just buy the
tortillas, because the book also says you can go
ahead and just buy them because even back in 1831 they knew that
making tortillas from scratch was kind of a pain in the butt.
So first let's watch Ken make sifted masa that the recipe calls for
using full kernels of corn. So get about 2 cups of dried field corn,
and boil them in water for about an hour until they're mashable.
Then strain them out, and let them dry for a bit. Then comes the hard part,
Ken uses a huge mortar and pestle to grind the corn into
a paste which he then pushes through a sifter
to give him a nice smooth dough hence the term sifted quesadillas.
This is not a task for the impatient so now as I mentioned I'm going to be using
pre-ground dried masa harina, and it's going to be similar to what Ken
has though his still has the husks on it, and it's
probably not going to be as fine, but other than that the flavors should
be similar except for one important difference. My masa harina has
been nixtamalized, and you're probably saying
nixtama-what? And i promise i'm going to explain this
magical process called nixtamalization later on,
but for now let's just get back to the quesadillas.
So what you'll need for this recipe is one and a half cups or 180 grams of masa
harina. Now masa harina literally means corn
flour but it is not the same as corn flour that you're going to get in
the store so make sure that you're getting
masa harina, or masa flour rather than corn flour.
They're going to turn out very, very different. 1 cup or 250 milliliters of
warm water, 1 teaspoon of salt 2 tablespoons of lard,
plus quite a bit more for frying. If you don't
want lard you can go ahead and use whatever oil you want but i'm going to
use lard. Two tablespoons of tequesquite water. So how
you're going to make this tequesquite water is you take about a tablespoon of
tequesquite, and pour about a half cup of boiling
water over it then you let the tequesquite settle,
and let the water cool and then you just skim the water off of the top.
Don't eat the actual rocks at the bottom. Now I read online that if you don't have
tequesquite you can use baking powder though it is not going to
do the same thing exactly, but it is going to give it that same
puffing effect hopefully, but if you want to use tequesquite I have a
link in the description to where you can get that online. And 4
ounces or 115 grams of cheese. Now the recipe says to use either aged
or fresh cheese so that is basically every cheese that's ever
existed in the world so i'm going to use oaxaca cheese but
you can use whatever you want. So first add your salt to the masa harina,
and pour in the warm water, and mix together until you get a paste.
Now if you followed Ken's lead and used full kernels of corn,
then you don't need to add the water you have plenty in there so just add the
salt, but from here on out everything is the
same. So next add in your two tablespoons of melted lard,
and the two tablespoons of tequesquite water skimmed off the top,
then mix everything together. If you think the dough is a little too moist
then just add in some more flour and if you think it's too dry
add in a little more lard or water. At this point we're ready to make our
tortillas. Now you can either just roll them out with a rolling pin or you
can just make them flattened with your hands,
but if you have a tortilla press now is the time to use it because
they're so fun. So roll your masa into balls about the size of a golf
ball, and then form it into a tortilla however
you like. I'm using the press. Now with the press you'll definitely
want to use some parchment or plastic wrap to keep it from sticking.
The recipe says to put a little extra flour on there to keep it from sticking,
but I tried that and it didn't work. So once your
tortillas are ready it's time to do as Richard Simmons commands,
and melt that fat in a skillet over medium-high heat, and while that fat
heats up seems as good a time as any to check out the history
of corn tortillas.
The word for corn tortillas in the Aztec language Nahuatl
is tlaxcalli and that literally means to bake.
Ours are fried so I don't even know if they count as corn tortillas but
I'm not going to think about that. Instead i'm going to focus on that
process that I mentioned earlier nixtimalization which every time I think
about people just happening upon this process, iit blows
my mind. So let me break it down for you. The word
itself comes from the Nahuatl word nixtamali, and it refers to ashes
and corn dough and essentially it was the process of cooking maize or corn
in water that had either lye which came from
the ashes of hardwood, or lime which came from
ground up mussel shells. Cooking the maize this way would break down the
outside of the kernel then making it easier to to grind into
masa. What makes it even more mind-bogglingly amazing to me
is actually the side effect that happens when
you nixtamalize corn which the people probably did not realize,
and that's the fact that besides moving carcinogenic aflatoxins, always a good
thing to get rid of, the process of nixtamalization also
would allow niacin or vitamin B3 to be absorbed by the person who's eating it.
So Ken's version of his sifted masa hasn't
gone through the process so it's going to be
very deficient in niacin, and that's fine because by the 19th century people in
Mexico were getting niacin from other food sources,
but before the Spanish came the main source of niacin
needed to come from corn because that was the staple of the diet.
And if you're eating mostly corn for your diet not putting it through the
process of nixtimalization can lead to a host of diseases including
pellagra, which can cause horrible dermatitis, hair
loss, and even dementia so it's very important that they came up
with this process and it just amazes me because it is by no means
universal. In the 15th century when Columbus took
maize back to Spain to be grown he neglected to inform the people of the
process of nixtimalization, and so it's not surprising that pellagra
spread amongst the lower classes in much of
Europe because they were eating mostly corn, because it
was cheap and easy to grow, and just like knowledge can spread so
can a lack of knowledge because most of the places that
Europeans then colonized had the same problem with this disease.
The United States, the Congo, South Africa, India. In fact still to this
day in parts of India and China the disease persists so there's just
one more thing that Columbus really kind of screwed up.
Anyway after the process of nixtimalization the kernels would be
ground mostly by women into masa using a
cylinder-shaped stone called a mano and a concave stone base
called a metate. We can actually see the process in a
document called the Codex Mendoza which was created around the
year 1542, shortly after the Spanish conquest.
Through the work of native Aztec artists it documented the history of the Aztec
kings as well as the daily life of the people including what they wore,
how they fought, their religion, and even how they punished their children.
Definitely more strict than my parents, much worse than a time out.
Maize is also mentioned in Hernan Cortez's second letter to the holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. It's also one of the first mentions of
corn syrup. "the city has many public squares, in
which are situated the markets... where are daily assembled more than sixty thousand
souls, engaged in buying and selling; and where are found all kinds of
merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life as for
instance articles of food... honey and wax from bees, and from the
stalks of maize, which are as sweet as sugar-cane.
Maize or Indian corn, in the grain and in the form of bread,
preferred in the grain for its flavor to that of the other islands in terra firma."
Now it makes sense that maize would be featured in both of these documents
because it was an integral part to Aztec life. In fact for
an earlier civilization, the Maya, it was life, literally.
In the kitchen creation myth the gods literally made
humans out of yellow and white corn. If only the Aztecs had known that then they
wouldn't have had to rely on the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl
to get it for them. Legend has it that long ago during the fifth sun
the Aztec people only ate what they could hunt or gather,
but they knew of a plant that grew on the other side of the mountains that
surrounded them called maize. They asked their gods to
move the mountains so they could go get to this plant but
their gods said that the mountains were too great to move.
Finally they asked Quetzalcoatl who said that they were still too big to move but
he would use his intelligence to go get the maize
for the Aztec people. So seeing a red ant scurrying toward the mountains one day
he turned himself into a black ant and followed the red one.
After several days of treacherous, perilous travels through the mountains
he came out on the other side where the maize grew.
So he went up and picked up a kernel in his little ant pincers,
and brought it back to the Aztec people who were grateful.
Though i'm sure that some people were like "Couldn't have become a slightly
bigger animal? >_> Brought back like a bag of corn because we got a lot
of people here to feed so... <_< but no thank you, thank you..." and those
mountains that surrounded the Aztec people would have been the Sierra Madres.
So despite what Humphrey Bogart might lead
you to believe, the real treasure of the Sierra Madre was maize
because archaeologists have found that maize was
being grown and made into corn tortillas as far back as 10,000 years ago. So while
the cheese in our quesadillas might be relatively new coming over with the
Spanish from Europe, the corn tortillas have been around
since the time of the Aztec gods. A perfect dish of new world, and old
world come together and I can't wait to get
back to it. So once the lard or oil is nice and hot
take a bit of cheese, and place it in the center of the tortilla and then
fold it over and pinch it closed all around the edge. If
the tortilla breaks anywhere, just press that part down with your
fingers as well then slip it into the lard
spooning some over the top as it fries. Now the recipe does not mention flipping
this over but the top never really got crispy. It got
cooked, but never crispy so i would actually suggest flipping it
over after about a minute. It's going to get
crispy on both sides, it's just much better.
Also don't overfill it with cheese cause the cheese will leak out and make a mess.
Once it's nice and crisp and is puffed up a bit
take it out of the pan, and set it on a paper towel or something else to let it
drain. Then repeat the process until you have
as many quesadillas as you like and eat them right away because in the words of
the Cocinero Mejicano they will harden and get ugly. En mi
casa yo no permito quesadillas duras y feas. :) And here we are quesadillas cernidas, or
sifted quesadillas. Little palette cleanser,
okay i'm ready. Let's give this a shot.
Hmm, that's mighty fine, mighty fine. They're
really, really crispy and because of the
tesquequite I guess they're a little puffed up. You know when
you bite into it you're getting those air pockets and everything it's really,
really good. The cheese is like all melty inside.
Don't use too much, I think it could could definitely overwhelm it very
easily but it's absolutely perfect, and then the
crisp shell it's almost like a like a tostada shell. It's - I mean it is
essentially. Absolutely wonderful. So what do you think Ken? How are yours? Can
I just tell you how good these things are?
Listen to that crunch.
So if you're enjoying Tasting History make sure to follow me on Twitter and
Instagram where I post pretty much daily, but once or twice a week I'm posting
short videos called Facts by Max which are historical stories that didn't
necessarily fit into an episode, but that deserve to be told.
So I will see you over there, and i'll see you next time on Tasting History. ^_^y