March 28th 2008

The corn at its best - 7 ft high kaanga ma

The harvest season is fully upon us, this week it’s corn. We’ve built our first corn crib, and learned a lot in the process. We built it from green wood harvested in the Tasmanian Blackwood plantation behind us, a little old netting and a pile of old roofing iron from the recycling centre in Opotiki which is the best I’ve seen anywhere.

The bees went crazy on the corn pollen this season here in Whitianga Bay

We are now beginning to fill it up with our harvest of Kaanga ma, but have also realised that it is going to be a great place to store other things to keep them rat proof. A few racks near the top will be great for pumpkin storage and a few nails in the ridge pole will be great for hanging seed potatoes from as well. Anyway it’s exciting to be able to finally build one and put the corn into it.

Taking the outer leaves off the cobs has also been an amazing process. We discovered recently that it is a traditional thing around here to keep the dried leaves to weave rain capes from, they are kind of waxy and water proof and make beautiful capes. I saw one at the Regional Kapa Haka finals a few weeks ago. We also began thinking of all the other things we could use them for and  the first trial at using them as a mulch on the floor of the chicken run has been a huge success. All those of us who do not have access to hay for putting in chicken runs, straw yards or even the pig house for the pigs bedding, even the calf pen. We began putting the leaves in our chicken pen two weeks ago and the chickens have now got it down to a fine art, they spend all day mixing them up with all their other scraps and I can see by spring it will be beautiful compost. They also tend to keep the yard dry and warm and will be excellent for the winter season in the covered yard.  Obviously however it is used it needs to eventually be returned to the garden, to replace the nutrients its has taken out. The Lands remover the outer leaves from their dry corn in the garden and leave it right there, to be returned to the soil….. Amaranth next week!

Kaanga ma is our favourite multi purpose dry corn

Tortilla Lasagne

It's the season for eggplants, peppers tomatoes garlic and Kanga Ma so we thought we'd put them all together and came up with this great treat.

Put 1 cup of dry flour corn (Kaanga Ma, or Blue Hopi, Pink Hopi, Hokianga Yellow and Red etc.) into a pot with 3 cups of ash water made by taking clean ash from your woodstove or lighting a special fire with dry clean wood and collecting the ash. Put the ash into a large jar so that it fills the jar 1/4 of the way up. Then fill the jar with water and let the water clear. It will be soapy and a strong alkaline liquid at that point. If you have charcoal in with your ash it will float so take it off the top.

Bring the pot to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes then, adding as much water as you need to stop the corn from drying out, turn off and leave over night. Bring to the boil again the next day and simmer until the corn is swollen and puffed open, and quite soft. In traditional Central America this is called posole and can be used for many things - it's great in soup instead of the soup mixes we used to buy, can be put through the corn grinder and then used to make all kinds of traditional Central American dishes. We tip the pot of posole and ash water into a colander and run clean water over it to clean the posole. Then put the posole into a bucket of fresh cold water and rub it until the husks float off. Float off as many as you can and then put the posole through the corn grinder as fine as possible. Now you have bowl of ground cooked corn, which you can form into balls in your hand and then put a plastic sheet (or banana leaf on the bench, place your corn ball on top, add another plastic sheet or leaf and roll out into a tortilla with the rolling pin. Heat the pan really hot, the top of the wood stove or barbeque fire is even better, roll the plastic off the top of the tortillas pick the tortilla up using the bottom sheet of plastic, tip your hand over so the tortilla goes into the pan and then quickly roll the plastic off the top of it. Turn over when it is beginning to get a few brown patches and take out when cooked.

Once you have a pile of tortillas, place one in the bottom of your lasagne dish, layer your sauteed eggplant, tomato, hot and sweet peppers, garlic, onion and basil and make as many layers as you wish. When you have gone as high as you want place a tortilla on top and liberally sprinkle with cheese.

Tortillas made from Blue Hopi flour corn

Cook in moderate oven so the top doesn't burn

Kay