Of Gods and their eventual Casseroles

This is a story about the tears of an ocean , gifts from Heavens unknown and my idiotic need to layer it with cheese, recipe included!

I’m incredibly lucky, the people I get to meet at my supper club are some of the best people making some of the best things in Austin, Texas. Some nights are easier to remember than others, but there is a quote that I think about on a weekly basis that was uttered in the most intoxicating combination of statement and sincerity. The author of the sentence is an incredibly talented Chef, and a master of all things Masa, and exclaimed in earnest that Corn, itself, was a gift from God. Priscilla was talking in relation to Latin America, and the cultural impact of corn to the region, and we were winding down the night with surprise desserts, a little Mezcal and their leftover Tamales featured on the supper club’s menu. These particular Tamales were wrapped in banana leaf, in the flavor of, “sweet corn”, and, “a gift from God”, was apt as a descriptor. To be frank, I think about that quote and those Tamales in equal amounts. 

Gods gifting grains are one of the many parallels I see in Latin American and South Indian cuisine. The consequential ingenuities of these gifts in both regions seem too close for coincidence. Rice in South India is what Masa is to Latin America, fermented or processed, then steamed, fried, covered in husks and leaves, a template for big cuts of meat or stews of coconut and built civilizations on the trust of their continuing production.

I have a memory of me, as a child, going to wash my plate, artfully spreading rice grains around to give the illusion of finishing my dinner and reaching the sink only to find my aunt surveying the poorly constructed mirage of, “Clean Plate Club,” meeting my eyes and deftly stating, “For every grain of rice you waste, the ocean cries.” She took my plate and didn’t say anything further. She didn’t have to. I knew I made the ocean cry that night.