Masa

Nixtamal is sweet and lime-scented; epazote is the only herb loud enough to answer.

Whipped into the dough it aerates. Tamales without it are bricks.

Nixtamal plus pulse is a complete protein. The taste came second.

Alkali strips the hull and frees the niacin. Without it, corn is a deficiency.

Nixtamalised and fresh corn together, one savoury, one sweet.

Nixtamalised corn is sweet and flat; the ancho gives it depth, not heat.

Nixtamalised corn takes colour without taking any flavour it did not want.

Smoked chilli and lime-cooked corn share the same charred-field register.

Green acid on chalky alkaline dough. The pH gap is the whole flavour.

Fat and collagen soak into the crumb; the husk keeps it all in.

Bland meat, bland dough, and the salsa doing every bit of the work.

Fruity dried chilli toasted and ground into the dough, not onto it.

Nixtamal corn gives the alkaline, toasty base a lean braise needs.

Sour mucilage against dry alkaline corn: two Mexican textures nobody exports.

Toasted corn and toasted bean, thickened together and drunk hot.

Both are Mesoamerican and both smell of husk. Atole was the original vehicle.

Shared pyrazines from two different roasts. The lime note cuts the bitterness.

Alkaline corn and brine: the mineral edge lines up more than it should.