Where One of the World's Best Mexican Restaurants Gets Its Corn — Vendors

Mexico is literally the birthplace of corn and so there's about 59 heirloom varieties in Mexico. Varietals that have been in families and communities for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Those 59 sort of breeds make up everything that we see across the world. I was so curious to see what the rest tasted like, how to kind of understand the nuances in between each one and how to share that story with chefs. We work in the field. We plant Criollo corn. There are four colors here. Here we have white corn, yellow corn, black corn, which is blue, and vela tobe. It's exclusive to Santana Cegache. This is a colored soil and it's sandy. It yields more corn. Corn is, it's just a way of life in Mexico in a very different way. These are farmer-selected varietals, so varietals that have been in families and communities for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I started working with a kind of a group of seed breeders in Mexico. You know, are there farmers who are still growing these 59 varieties? And they're like, of course, like we've actually been struggling trying to find people who are interested in, you know, creating a market for them. We have to let the corn dry well in the field. We leave it here for about 15, 20 days so it dries well and then we start taking it off. Corn is number one, right? It's the most important thing. It's a basic product for the family because we use corn for everything. Without corn, at least in Oaxaca, we wouldn't live. All the plants, it's like a mazorca, let's call it. There are some that have two. This variety is a blue ball. We have this seed, we don't know since when. It passes from generation to generation. Year after year, we take out the seed from harvest to harvest. The purpose is to maintain the same quality of the grain and not bring other corn that is not native to here. Because if they brought us another type of corn, then practically our maíz criollo would be lost or mixed. It's worrying. Right now we are de-leaving the mazorca. The size matters a lot and the grain that is clean. As you can see, this mazorca, it got wet and it's not good anymore. It produces a fungus. Inside those fungus, there is one that we call the cuitlacoche. We use it for the quesadillas, which are very tasty. But when it's dry, it's not good anymore. And all the small corn, we use it for the animals. In heirloom corn, you get a lot more diversity of flavor. You get a lot of nuance. In hybrid corn, like a GMO hybrid corn, you are selecting one thing. And usually that one thing is like yield. You're typically breeding for security. We are doing it at the expense of things like flavor for our nutrition. Farmers who are throughout Mexico have maintained these traditions to really preserve the full expression of what one heirloom varietal is. We always select from a single color, like these. This is the process of de-seeding. Our grandparents taught us how to use our work tools. These are the same olotes from the mazorca, and this is how it works. We don't waste anything from the corn. When you're working with a staple as sacred as corn in Mexico, which is a subsistence crop, it was very important to us that not only enough corn was being left within each family household, but also communities. It was just, if you have a surplus, from there we've been able to really understand how to scale that, not at the expense of communities or farmers, but involve as many producers as possible. We worked with about 12 producers our first year, and we work with about 2,000 producers today across six states. Here we're going to select all the grains that broke, the grains of another color, and all the little ones fall down, and this is the measure we're going to use for sale. Just by listening to the sound, it means that the corn is already dry. It's good to store. It has a sound. The grain is coming out, which has been stored for more than a year. This is the yellow corn. From there, we're going to go through the pruning process to remove the tarmo. The tarmo is the dust that is generated during a saved period of time. I had my hands full with just trying to figure out how to create a supply chain around this product in Mexico that had never been kind of commercialized in this way. Like, how do you even get a pallet of corn from one place to another when there are no pallets? The first couple of years, we were just trying to figure those things out, and Ivan was really the linchpin within the first community we started in to begin communicating with people that this was an option. I mean, the way he did that was just genius. Indigenous radio stations, loudspeakers on top of, you know, pizza delivery cars in different languages, you know, all to benefit the community, but really coming from within. This is the corn that we're going to cook. This is the yellow corn. I'm going to put it here in the pot so it can cook. I'm going to add the lime. This has been done in some form or fashion throughout Mexico for millennia. Corn on its own doesn't have a ton of nutrition, but when you take it through this miximalization process, which is basically just cooking corn in alkaline water, which helps break down the cell walls of the corn, it becomes incredibly nutritious. It fortifies the corn with calcium, unlocks the naturally occurring amino acids and proteins and things like that that make it a very nutritious superfood. First varietal I ever tasted, I taste carrots, I taste butternut squash. He's like, yeah, there's beta-carotene in it. Typically, these are things that are bred out of corn at a commercial level because they're thinking about other things. It kind of blew my mind, and then I just, I was so curious to see what the rest tasted like. The Zapotecos here in the valley cultivate the bolita breed. Each breed has its own adaptability. They make it almost endemic. We are working on the rescue of these native breeds. So hopefully one day we can share the more than 60 breeds with the whole world. I take the dough to roll it out and make the tortillas. They're kneading the dough. You pass it through here and the tortilla comes out smoother. My mom taught me how to make the tortillas. She would leave me a little bit of dough to make the tortillas. In Mexico we have a per capita consumption of 200 kilograms per person. We can't eat if there are no tortillas. I think we're made of corn. Maybe even our blood is the color of the atobe. Imagine a day when they tell you the tortillas are over. They get mad. The tortillas are over. I worked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns for an apprenticeship, and it was there that I kind of got my first exposure to this concept of what we now call regenerative agriculture. And I grew up with one parent who was born in Mexico, and then when I looked at foods that I grew up eating, I just didn't see very much of that being expressed in that conversation. How could we position foods I was rooted to and connected to so that it also benefited from this changing conversation? The pumpkin flower, the epazote, the quesillo, the champignons. It's a quesadilla. It's perfect now. Send it to Macienda, and let it eat its quesadillas. Our bolita azul from Macienda. Everything starts with corn. Very fruity kind of smell out of this corn, which I think goes amazing with the dish that we're going to make today. This is our bolita azul that was already mixed with the rice. This is our mill. It was built in Mexico. These are stones made out of volcanic rock. Actually, my dad picked out these rocks, and he shipped them to us. The molino is a very temperamental machine, if you will. We deal with stones. You have to learn how to listen to the mill, feel how your mass is coming out. For me, I find it therapeutic at this point. I've grinded masa in this molino so many times. It starts with this. If we don't have masa, then the day can't go right. I had met Enrique at this sort of event that was going on at Blue Hill. I read that he was going to open up Cosme. Would you like to buy these tortillas made from heirloom corn from Mexico? And he's like, we're good on that, but we will definitely take your corn if you're able to get that in time for the opening. I mean, I was delivering this personally in a two-door Volkswagen Golf, but they were our first customer. Helping them build a kitchen around an ingredient that was really important to what they were doing. This is soft. It's not sticky. The tortilla ladies are the ultimate judge. I'm going to add salt. I'm going to add water. Now I'm going to make the memelas. It has to look like this. We're going to go ahead and fry our memelas. I started working with Chef Enrique back in 2012. I remember back then Cosme was just kind of like a dream, kind of like a kitchen conversation. Ever since I walked into this place, I know it was special. They're called garlics. It's a mix between garlics and leeks. And then I'm going to mix them with a kimchi paste that has miso, chile guajillo. It has chile de arbol. It has pineapple vinegar. For our memela, Gruyere cheese. This is my favorite cheese when I was growing up. And then we have queso Oaxaca. It's your classic string cheese from Mexico. Knowing how much time and how much history and how much culture is in this, being able to bring it to a city like New York and let people from all over the world experience it, that's what makes me excited for sure. There were just so many different foods and staples that once they were touched and influenced by a chef, would have a different relationship on shelf. Tortillas were just like this afterthought. Chips are free. Tortillas are free. This was the first time that a tortilla was literally being, people were charging for this. The costumers of the world had started to change what we thought about the value of Mexican food.