At first I considered my corn crop this year a bit of a fail. The sweet corn was misshapen, tiny kernels on short and too slender ears. I planted three varieties, all in three sisters mounds with beans and squash (which may be another blog post, or two, themselves.) Of the three, perhaps the most successful was the blue variety, a fiels corn meant to be dried and ground.
I probably got 5 good ears of blue corn, and the good thing about was that it could either stay on the stalk and dry or dry in my kitchen, either way was fine, depending on humidity and critters. A month or so ago, I took 30 minutes to remove the dried kernels from their ears, resulting in perhaps half a pound of blue corn. What to do next was a puzzle, but not a pressing one, since the dried corn would last indefinitely.
A week or so ago, it occurred to me that a pot of posole would be nice, and I wondered if any corn could become hominy. Turns out, it can, all it takes is nixtamalization, an ancient process where kernels are boiled with lime (not the fruit, but the calcium salt), to soften them and release more of their nutritional value.
A few clicks of the mouse, and some food grade CaOH was headed my way, although my research indicated that most Latin markets would stock it as well. Yesterday I weighed and boiled my ingredients, and this morning I rinsed and finished the corn in the pressure cooker, and when it was done, miraculously, I had several cups of plump blue hominy.
Who knew!?
Um, just centuries of indigenous cooks.
And now, me, too.
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