The world is round like a tortilla
This circle of ground corn is everywhere, from taco stands to gourmet restaurants. It is also a symbol threatened by industrialisation, so committed chefs are now defending tortilla savoir-faire.
The tortillera takes a small quantity of yellow dough — with a consistency not unlike children’s modelling clay — into his fingers with swift precise movements. The cornmeal — masa de maíz — ball is placed in the wooden tortilladora and, with a sharp snap, is compressed to create a pancake with the dimensions most often seen in Mexico City: 11 cen- timetres in diameter and 1.5 milli- metres thick. The raw tortilla round is then placed carefully on a comal, a large metal griddle heated by glowing embers. A moment passes and, with a quick glance, the tortillera checks the underside for doneness, then flips the pancake over. The tortilla swells like a pufferfish before being removed from the griddle. “One old custom says that when your tortilla fills with air, you’re ready for mar- riage!” Santiago Muñoz laughs. In the kitchens of the Maizajo tortillería, the young man and his associate, Eric Daniel González, produce the best tortillas in Mexico City, as judged by the megalopolis’ greatest chefs. Santiago and Eric Daniel, strapping fellows at 25 and 27 years of age, have corn under their skin. And that’s not even taking into account the ear of corn tattooed on Eric Daniel’s arm, or his corn-kernel-patterned sneakers. Maizajo is the symbol of the tortillería renaissance, the revival of these arti- sanal outlets seeking to re-establish a presence in the urban landscape.
Ancestral recipe
Though the taco is everywhere to be seen, the tortilla, which serves as its edible container, is rarely made before customers’ very eyes and can sometimes be lacking in quality. The vast majority of tortillas consumed — 90 kilos per year per Mexican! — are industrially produced. “We founded Maizajo while we were chef and man- ager of the Fonda Mayora restaurant in Mexico City,” Eric Daniel explains. “At first, we just wanted to offer our customers the best tortilla possible. But since it was so challenging to get the supplies we needed, we started making them ourselves. Most of our fellow citizens don’t know what type of maize (corn) is used to make tor- tillas and know nothing about the nixtamalization process.” This term — which is taken from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs that is still spo- ken today — is a portmanteau of nextli (ashes) and tamalli (cornmeal). The original recipe entails soaking the kernels and then cooking them in a natural alkaline solution — with ashes or lime — to chemically transform them for use as a soft dough. This masa de maíz is the base ingredient of tortillas, as well as tamales (ground corn and other ingredients wrapped in leaves and steamed), chalupas (a thick pancake topped or filled with meat and vegetables), sopes (fried corn cakes with savoury toppings), gorditas (stuffed turnovers) or tla- coyos (fried or toasted oval-shaped masa cakes with savoury fillings).
The pre-Hispanic peoples achieved full mastery of nixtamalization, as proven by the first traces of this pro- cess found around 1,000 BC, in the Preclassic Mesoamerican period. Maizajo, like the other tortillerías handcrafting tortillas, is carrying on this tradition that is thousands of years old. Still, Eric Daniel and Santiago went through a fair amount of “on-the-job learning” and recount their trial-and-error phase before achieving satisfactory results. “There’s no-one around who teaches about the ratios, the dosage of lime volume in relation to the corn quantities. And there wasn’t anyone who could train us. We did test after test. In the little towns where they still use this traditional method, they measure in ‘handfuls’”. The process, being very lengthy and hard to master, has discouraged many restaurants and taquerías (taco stands) from going “authentic”. Every phase of the pro- cess takes 24 hours: soaking, cook- ing, maceration, draining, rinsing and grinding the maize, before even making the masa and then the tortil- las. Nowadays, families prefer to buy them readymade or use nixtamalized flour: a volume of water and a few minutes’ labour are enough to have ready-to-cook dough. Though there’s no question that it saves time, knowledge of the product and Mexicans’ direct connection to their staple food are likely to disappear.
The recipe is nearly ageless, from preparing the masa de maíz, a tortilla’s main ingredient, to cooking them on the comal.
Land of the taco
Committed women and men became aware of the issue and supported the movement to preserve this culture. Deborah Holtz, founder of the Trilce publishing company, joined forces with Juan Carlos Mena to co-direct La Tacopedia: Enciclopedia del taco, published in 2013 (translated into English and published by Phaidon in 2015). “Mexico is the taco,” she explains. “But when we started this book, we didn’t yet know how very true that was. The taco is the embodiment of this country, more than any other symbol, be it the flag or football. Here, we don’t say ‘let’s go eat’; we say ‘let’s go eat a taco’. Each locality has its own speciality. When it comes to national identity, I don’t think there’s a comparable dish anywhere in the world. The idea of doing a book came to me while I was in a taquería, at 5 o’clock in the morning, after leaving a party. I was fascinated by the dexterity of the tortillera and the cook. This is an ancestral culinary tradition from a process that must be perfectly executed. People say we’re unorganised, but when it comes to tacos, everything operates with the precision of a Swiss watch. “We can’t let this know-how be for- gotten,” Deborah continues gravely. “Mexicans eat tortillas every day, but do they really care about what they eat? This is all much more vulnerable than most people think. These days, when it comes to corn, our country is no longer self-sufficient. But the Aztecs showed common sense in their farming techniques. They perfected what’s called the milpa, a crop-grow- ing system that puts three different plants in the same fields: corn, beans and squash. Corn serves as a guardian and provides the necessary shade for the climbing beans; the broad leaves of the squash preserve the soil moisture and protect against wind and rain erosion; the spiny squash is a deter- rent to herbivores. This agro-ecological balance meant the population remained in good health. It’s not the tortilla that has led to the rise in obesity in Mexico — it’s soda and sugar.”
New flavours
Today’s great chefs are making it their responsibility to promote the tortilla and mine its vast potential. One of these activists is Enrique Olvera of the Pujol restaurant, along with a new generation of cooks. “The tortilla has always been fundamental to us,” says the chef. “But the current shift toward gourmet foods and fine dining has made us more aware of the sophistication of this product, a food that offers many more possibil- ities than we ever imagined. As with coffee, the flavours of maize vary with growing areas, varieties and farming techniques. Rather than talking about corn, we need to talk about corns!” The tortilla is the emblem of a culi- nary heritage that Enrique Olvera strives to promote in many coun- tries, when he’s not busy cooking at the Pujol restaurant. “Size, colour, thickness — tortillas are prepared dif- ferently depending on the state, city, village,” continues the chef. “It’s a world in itself. The image that always comes back to my mind is of the sun. For me, the tortilla is as important as the sun.”
Mexico City’s chefs are taking action to promote the tortilla.
Enrique Olvera, chef at Pujol (left)
“It’s no surprise to see the tortilla gaining greater respect and presence in the big restaurants — it’s the natural evolution of things. As chefs, our responsibility is to bring tradition to life in the present day. I’d like us to be examples for our fellow citizens to follow. Restaurants like Pujol, as well as tortilleras doing business in Mexico City, need to facilitate preservation of this culture. The tortilla has many subtleties and is essential to countless extraordinary dishes.”Santiago Muñoz and Eric Daniel González, chefs and founders of Maizajo (right)
“We produce nearly 20 kilograms of tortillas a day, which is about 700 individual tortillas. We buy corn from small producers and pay them a fair price. Maizajo is more than just a shop — we think of it as a corn research laboratory. There’s an urgent need to teach this tradition, pass on this know-how, especially to the younger generations!”
Mikel Alonso, chef at Biko (left)
“I’m Spanish, from the Basque Country. I came to Mexico twenty years ago and discovered this vast land with an incredible variety of foods and techniques, the result of geographical diversity and varied climates. My cooking pays tribute to local cultures: without tomatoes, chili peppers, potatoes, we would be nothing! And corn represents the flavour, the identity.”Jorge Vallejo, chef at Quintonil (center)
“Mexican cuisine is based on simple, inexpensive ingredients. My objective is to explore every option that corn makes possible and serve it in different forms, flavours, textures. That means creativity by sheer necessity, because the recipes are all so old that you might think that everything’s been done before. But every time I travel to a little village, I discover a new way to prepare it. It has infinite potential!”Gerardo Vázquez Lugo, chef at Nicos (right)
“The tortilla is more than a basic ingredient. It’s sacred, it’s our identity. Our blood and bones are made of corn! Every Mexican, from the poorest to the richest, eats it three times a day. It’s the most democratic of all products. I’m sometimes called the ‘master of tortillas’, but it’s all the women who’ve been cooking tortillas for thousands of years that deserve that title!”
Oswaldo Oliva, chef at Alelí and Lorea (left)
“The tortilla is central to Mexican culture. It symbolises this country in and of itself. It’s rather like sushi in Japan, which also varies greatly in quality, from the most industrial to the most artisanal and sustainable. The culture and crop that gave rise to the tortilla is threatened, even if you can find tacos on every street corner. Today, Mexico massively imports its corn from the United States [for $2.3 billion in 2016, according to the Ministry of Economy — Ed.] It’s absurd!”Sofia Garcia, chef in Mexico City (right)
“I serve cuisine that takes inspiration from traditional recipes. Corn is the essential ingredient and you can use it in a thousand ways. Making your own tortillas could be considered a political statement. To combat industrialisation, we have to get back to the old ways, the ancient know-how of nixtamalization. I buy from a maize producer who grows his crops sustainably on land near the Popocatépetl volcano.”
