The thing is, I have giant sack of frozen corn and three bags of masa harina and I also have popcorn that was milled to powder here at home. That is a lot of corn in various forms for a regular bloke. I also have about 15 or so jalapeño chile peppers, or maybe it's 8, or possibly 6. Look, I didn't count them, okay? The point is they are left over from a giant package of jalapeños and they're starting to go wrinkly. It'd be a shame to waste them so I'm trying to make use of the things that are here in abundance, especially the things on their way out.
I am also still trying to invent something spectacular with these ingredients. This is good, very good, but not quite ready for Prime Time.
Frozen corn is processed to tiny bits. The frozen bits are mixed with masa and other Southwestern ingredients, onion and jalapeño. Oh poop, I forgot garlic. That would have been good too. Plus nondescript melting Mexican white cheese. Then coriander and cumin because apparently I have to put those in everything now. You might want something else. You know, a fresh herb wouldn't be bad either. It's just that some days I don't feel like picking around with them. Plus little leaves always end up on the floor, and I'm sort of tired of fussing with these floors right now.
All of that stuff ↑ is combined with commercial chicken broth. Milk probably would have worked too. I added enough broth to form a sludge. But then the sludge turned into paste so I added more broth. Then that turned into paste so I added more. I wanted to heat the mixture and keep it sludgy as possible. I debated for a moment about using a pot or a pan. I figured a pan would be easier to clean so I used that. As soon as the mixture hit the heated pan, the most wonderful aroma swept outward and immediately transported me to Mexico in my mind.
I love love LOVE this combination of ingredients.
The mixture fries quite attractively, I think due to the cheese inside. The entire pan was flipped as you see those chefs on TV do without a spatula. But I wanted the pile to be broken up with crispy bits inside and out, not like a big thick pancake which isn't interesting.
I enjoyed eating this very much and I will undoubtedly make it again and and again to suit myself, like my own secret thing except it's totally public published on here, but I will probably never serve it because it is oafishly insufficiently refined.
This concludes the corn breakfast.
❀ ❀ ❀ ✿ ✿ ✿ flowers ✿ ✿ ✿ ❀ ❀ ❀ butterflies ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ✿ ✿ ✿
Below is something I debated not posting because it is not directly food-related and tends to distract from the purpose of this blog. It's a bit political and the greater part of me resents its intrusion. Still, it arose from my interest in food and my writing about my activities relating to food.
Should my happy blog be suddenly closed down it will probably because of this: (links unavailable on screen capture below.)
I don't think I will ever forgive George Bush for creating the Department of Not just because it has turned air travel, something that used to be nearly pleasant and almost fun into an experience perfectly dreadful, but because that particular nasty expansion of government is unacceptable to my well-being and contentment. Its mission creep, its ever expanding milieu, is unbearable. It is untenable. I will support any candidate of any party, or no party at all, who swears on a stack of sacred texts to do their best to disassemble that Department or at least shrink it to near insignificance if that is possible. Bush said himself after the attacks to carry on as usual or else the so-called terrorists will have won, but then he proceeded to change lastingly and possibly forever my country that once stood a chance at being lovely.
Here my happy blog devoted to things wot I made then ate ends up talking about government intrusion because government has poked its intrusive nose into my happy blog, and I do not like that.
I have no idea if an individual at is a fan of this blog, if that is the case then, "Hi !" *waves*, odd though thatis the only post I wrote where I see 's ISP has visited, or if somebody referred my blog for inspection, or if their algorithmic word-crawling filters on their awesome complex of super duper computers picked up the red-flag terms that I used in that post, "" and "" which these shaky words evade, or what. The thought of my own tax dollars paying for something so terrible that I do not support, extending its tentacles from its original purpose to come so lowly poking around my little blog then is a bad thing to see. I would kill it if I could, send everyone involved off packing, off looking for something else to do.
I did not realize that was in charge of upholding the ban ons until I noticed them sniffing around mypost.
But then by looking further into this thing I had only sensed up to then, I learned among many other things that a Winipeg woman was recently stopped at the US/Canadian border and selected for random search. Upon discovery of a singleegg she was given a choice to either surrender the offendingegg or face a $300.00 fine. The US government sent the woman, oddly coincidentally named Bird, a 7-page letter asking her permission to destroy the egg (where destroy means giving the candy egg with its toy inside to some border security's kid). If Bird wished to contest the seizure she could pay $250.00 storage fee while the two sides wrangle over the issue. US officials say they've confiscated 25,000eggs in 2,000 separate seizures last year.
Sheesh.
This thread on Metafilter about that news item is straight-up hilarious. The members there have a field-day with the item. The item linked above talks about border security and Metafilter members assume , and it is that is sniffing about my page.
One guy in that Metafilter thread launches into a long and amusing philosophical exegesis purporting to be a segment of the seven-page letter Bird received, a diversion he says the letter makes on the nature of real material, the void at the center of the egg which resembles the empty space of a vase which is the reality of a vase, the void in vase's center being the thing of value when filled with something that is not the vase. That something, in the case of the , being the toy that fills the void of the egg, compensates for the failure of product (chocolate egg) to meet expectations, for no product ever adequately fulfills expectations on its own. It's always the prestige and the babes you imagine you get with the new automobile, the tapes you get free with the VCR, the prize on the inside cap of a bottle of Coke, the prize in the box of Cracker Jacks. It is quite a long comment and something of a task to go through, but I found it very interesting that a commenter would post such an extravagant and wonderful thing elaborating so thoroughly on a pique that I thought was entirely my own.
But then later in the thread another member calls out the author of that post in a manner so subtle that it is easy to miss. He says simply,
Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher. I did not make that connection.
Then way further down the Metafilter thread, amusing comment upon amusing comment upon amusing comment, then this,
"Something something..and what the hell is this?
The member links to yet another separate article on another page written by the philosopher Slavoj Žižek and loaded withreferences all over the place, the item is titled, with lots of photos ofs, that reads word for word what the first lengthy philosophical comment near the top of the Metafilter thread incorporated without citing, indicating plagiarism by that Metafilter commenter to the very worst degree.
Tsk tsk.
But wait, there's more. See? And here I thought all along that I was alone in my views, the only one who felt this way aboutchocolate eggs being banned. Come to find out, everybody feels the same way. Praise the Lord! I am not alone.
Reason.com picks up the item. As usual, the comments there to the article are more interesting than the article itself. It's heart'nin, I tells ya, and all of this gives me hope for a brighter future, free of these surly no-class intrusions on our real-life freedoms.
Glad to know that DHS is keeping us safe from those chocolates. Drug violence spilling into the US from Mexico....not so much. But being kidnapped and held at gunpoint in a warm, sunny location does sound like a vacation compared to choking on a chocolate covered smurf, I'd say. (it's been a cold, rainy spring in the midwest)
ReplyDeleteThe entire creepiness of our government confiscating thousands of chocolates with complete seriousness (and presumably checking out your blog due to the mention of the chocolate whose name we shall not speak) has me wondering if the Mayans are onto something with the whole 2012 thing.
I have never heard of milling popcorn to a powder. Is this something you do on a regular basis? What would be the use? I know you used it here, but apparently the corn was milled a while back. What was the thought in mind?
ReplyDeleteFortWorthGuy, short answer: the thought was to have yellow grits with all of the kernel.
ReplyDeleteI did this first with a coffee mill. Surprisingly, it worked beautifully. Then one night my sister was helping with a dinner for my family and we ground up so much popcorn that it loosened the blade on the coffee mill. Epoxy held only briefly so I bought another mill. They're the cheap kind on Amazon.
The new coffee mill wore out similarly so I bought another cheap one. That would be the third cheap coffee mill and that was wore out too. The last two mills were not as sturdy as the first, apparently manufacturing shifted to Asia.
So now I am on the fourth coffee mill and it is an extra sturdy one but I've finally learned from my profligate carefree ways and I've become reticent to put popcorn kernels in it, although I do process all kinds of other seeds, including chickpeas.
Now I mill the popcorn in a Nutrimill designed for wheat flour. The Nutrimill handles the corn kernels like they are nothing at all. The aroma that emanates while milling is extraordinary. The powder it produces readily absorbs liquid and can be fashioned into anything, firm enough to cut as polenta patties, or wet and smooth as oatmeal.
The polenta/grits is usually flavored heavily so far as concocting a curry. It makes incredible yellow shrimp 'n grits. I've served it to guests many times and it's always devoured even among annoyingly finicky eaters (my family).
McGee says Souther grits used to be white corn processed with an alkali to remove the outer husk, so this popcorn is not true grits. But modern grits and instant grits are often not processed with alkali so nowadays grits does resemble polenta very closely. It seems to me polenta is presently just a fancy word grits, although there are specialty polenta made from specific species of corn, 'otto file,' (eight rows) for example, grown in a specific spot in Piedmont Italy, renown for its outstanding flavor.
This same thing can be done with dry beans or any seed. Nuts can be processed at home too. A whole world of experimentation opens up by hacking the coffee mill. I've used the technique to make crackers, tahini, grits, polenta, binder for meat-loafs, additions to meat patties, combined in homemade pastas, additions in bread, soup thickeners.
Animation idea - K_nd_r S_rpr_s_ that opens up to the DHS secretary doing the cancan.
ReplyDeleteHahaha. t-man, that's a good one.
ReplyDelete