 Hi everyone, my name is Maria from the Long Beach Public Library. Hi, and I'm Cynthia, and today we're going to talk about corn. And corn was actually cultivated 9,000 years ago, and it is called Teocinte, and it was actually much smaller than. There were eight rows of corn, and Native Americans used corn to make dumplings, tamales, hominy, and ceremonial wedding cake bread. And Native Americans also used maize in their mattresses, containers, and to make toys, such as husk dolls. Corn is the most widely used crop in the Western Hemisphere, and you can actually see different kinds of corn in Peru and Mexico. And that will actually is due to the different weather conditions, such as the soil, the altitude, and the temperature. And here we have some different kind of corn. So we have that purple corn, we have some hominy, and here we have some choclo. And here we have our bag of maseca, which is a corn meal, which is used to make tortillas. And with the masa that we can make from the maseca, you can make a lot of different meals. The basic food that you can make is tortillas, and with tortillas you can make quesadillas like we have here, that you can eat with salsa, you can make enchiladas, tacos, chilaquiles, so lots of different foods with the tortilla itself. The masa from the maseca, you can also use to make tamales. Tamales are these right here, they're masa filled with different fillings, and we have sweet ones and savory ones, so we have examples of chicken, beef, pork, and cheese that we can try. We also have corn ones, and the corn ones are sweet tamales. We also have drinks that you can make with corn. This is an atole, this atole is chocolate flavored, and it is a thick drink made with corn and chocolate. There are different flavors of atoles, you can have coconut atole, you can have Juana, vanilla, whatever flavor you like. In Central America there is also a version of an atole, there is an atole de lotte, this is corn flavored, and you can have it with a side of corn that you can dip into the atole. In Central America there are also these, these are called riguas, and riguas are corn pancakes that you can eat with a side of sour cream, and the popular pupusas. These are thick tortillas stuffed with either cheese, beans, chicharron, whatever fillings you like, and you can eat those with a side of gordita, which is pickled cabbage. Now going down south we have some empanadas, these actually many different countries have different versions of their empanadas. This one is made out of chicken, and some countries call them empanadas, some call them pastelitos, but they're all very similar, which is a corn pastry filled with either chicken or beef, and we also have chicha morada, this is a Peruvian drink that is made out of the purple corn, and it also has pineapple, apples, and cinnamon, and this one is enjoyed as a cold drink. We have some books at the library that have some of these recipes, we have some examples here, this one is Mexico Gastronomía, we have this one in English and Spanish, we also have a Peruvian cookbook, and some very interesting books that have some history of the different foods that we've talked about during this series, so I recommend that you check these out. Now we're going to show you how to make tamales and esquite. And now Maria is going to show us how to make esquites, so for the esquites we're going to need some corn, make sure that you boil them before you start, we're going to have some cheese, preferably queso cotija, and you can buy that whole or already grated, we're going to need some mayonnaise, some lime, and your chile of your choice, you can either use a powdered chile or a side side if you prefer. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to cut off the kernels from the elote, and Maria is going to show you how to do one side of it, and we already have some precut, so we're going to fill our dish with the precut elote, and like I said before, this should already be boiled before you cut it from your husk, so on top of the corn we're going to add a little bit of mayonnaise, and on top of the mayonnaise we're going to sprinkle some of the queso cotija. Now we're going to add a squirt of the lime on top of that, the chile of your choice, there's different options here, we have a pico de gallo, that's a little spicier, we have the jain, that's a little more lime flavor, and like I said earlier if you prefer you can also use a salsa, so when we sprinkle the chile on top of the esquite, and you're all done. Now if you prefer to not cut the corn from the husk, you can also do an elote entero, and for that all you're going to do is you're going to spread the mayonnaise over the elote, and then sprinkle it with cheese, add a squirt of lime to that, and sprinkle it with chile. And now Sheridan is going to show us how to make tamales. Hi everybody, my name is Sheridan, I work at the Long Beach Public Library, and today I'm going to show you how to make a quick tamale recipe. So tamales are a super popular Latin American food, they've been around forever, and basically what they are is some masa with filling wrapped in a corn husk and then steamed. These need to be steamed for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how many tamales you have in the pot, but they usually are done in about 45 minutes to an hour. So this here is a chicken tamale, the fillings are super diverse though. I'm going to show you today how to make a cheese tamale, but you can do pork, beef, chicken with salsa, some people do sweet tamales with corn, and there's even such thing as tamales made from chocolate, which is pretty cool. So I chopped this one in half earlier to show you sort of the cross section. You can see that there is a layer of masa, along with the filling on the inside, and all of this is wrapped up in a corn husk, and then steamed. So I'll show you how to make a quick cheese tamale. The first thing you're going to need is some corn husks. They sell these at any store, they usually sell them dried out, so they need to be a little bit rehydrated. What you need to do is when you buy them, go through and separate all the corn husks, and you want to pull out all of the little corn fibers that are going to be in there, and you want to be careful as well, because sometimes they pack them and they're still wet, in which case mold can grow on the corn husk. You can see that this one has a little bit of mold on it, so you want to put those aside, you don't want to use those, and all the rest of them you want to rinse really well, and then set to soak for about 30 minutes or so, minimum. So we've got some that are already soaked. You're also going to need some masa. This masa, they sell at Northgate Superior, pretty much any Latin store already prepared, and so what it is, it's a special flour made for tamales, along with some lard, salt, and water. Sometimes they also prepare it with vegetable shortening for vegetarians, or you can even stir in instead of water, chicken stock, or chile to make it a little spicy. You can kind of go crazy with it. This is already prepared though, they sell it in five pounds, 10 pounds, and it's pretty cheap. So we have some masa. Today we're using queso oaxaca, which is a certain variety of cheese. You can also use queso fresco, or even cheddar cheese if you're into that. And we're using some red salsa. You can use salsa, or you can even throw in some sliced jalapenos, really however you feel. The first thing you're going to want to do is select your corn husk. So I've got one here that is pretty sizable. And what we're going to do is we have our corn husk, and we're going to grab some masa. Onto our spoon, you need a good chunk. So as you can see, I've got the masa here. And the technique that I end up using always is to use the palm of my hand and spread away from my body. So I'm going to take the corn husk, I'm going to rest the part where it curbs right on that palm of my hand. I'm going to plop the masa onto the corn husk, get rid of any excess. And then what you want to do is with the back of the spoon and using your thumb as pressure, you want to spread the masa away from your body. You want to do this so that you have a nice, pretty like sizable, you know, thick enough layer of masa to envelop any filling you've got. But you don't want too thick a layer of masa because then they're going to take forever to steam. And you're going to be waiting around for your tamales for three hours, your family's going to be angry at you. And nobody's going to be happy. So you want to keep spreading in a nice thin layer. Try to get it as even as possible. And as you can see, I'm rotating the corn husk to maintain that same action of spreading away from my body as I go. So I've got a nice thin layer there. It looks like I need a little bit more masa. So I'm going to grab a tiny bit more, plop it down there, and then just keep spreading using your thumb to press down on the spoon. And rotating the masa, the corn husk, sorry, little by little to be able to spread an even layer onto the corn husk. As you can see, there's bits of masa flying everywhere because sometimes you have to press kind of hard. Be sure to put down a towel or something on the table so that you can clean it up easy later. So now, as you can see, I've got a pretty even layer of masa. It doesn't look that cute on the inside, but it doesn't have to because you're going to wrap that up anyway. Now that I've got this, what I'm going to do is slice off a little hunk of cheese, just a thin slice there. Usually, when you're preparing this, you want to slice your cheese beforehand so you have all the slices you need it. You don't have to be slicing cheese in the middle of stuff. But now that I've got a few slices, I'm going to place them right in the middle there. I'll do three slices. And I'm going to do a little spoonful of salsa. You can put as much salsa as you like, but be mindful that the more salsa you put, the more humidity is going to be on the inside, the more moisture is going to be on the inside of the tamale, and it's going to take longer to cook. Once you have that, what you're going to do is fold over from one side, fold over from the other side, press down a little bit so that the masa sticks to the corn husk underneath and then fold up from the bottom. So now what you're going to have is an open end on the top, a folded end on the bottom, and you're going to place this into the pot standing up. Some people stack them, you know, laying down like that, that's okay too. I just end up usually putting them face up like this with the open top, with the open part at the top so that the salsa doesn't leak out. But if you don't have any runny fillings, you can just stack them laying down like that and it should be fine. These you want to steam for about 45 minutes to an hour, and then you know that they're done when you look in the pot and the corn husk is separating from the masa without any stickiness. Once you can pull the corn husk easily off the masa, you know that they're done and they're ready to eat. Enjoy. All right, thanks so much for joining us. Hopefully you had a lot of fun at our Club de Recetas Maís edition. And don't forget to join us for the rest of our Vida Latina programs. For more information, visit www.lbpl.org. See you then.