Corn Pepián (Pepian de Choclo)

History

Pepián de choclo here is a thick corn stew built on the pressed juice of fresh maize. Francisca Herrera grates the choclo (large-kernel fresh maize), grinds it in the mortar with a cup of broth, and strains it through loose cloth, pressing hard to draw out the milky liquid — and that pressed corn juice is the whole thickening engine of the dish. It is simmered into a sauce of onion, tomato, a little garlic and pepper, plenty of ground ají amarillo (the yellow Andean chili) and salt, together with pieces of parboiled chicken or pork, and boiled long until it sets; only if the corn alone will not thicken does she reach for a spoonful or two of white corn flour. The name records the method: pepián (pipián) traces to a Quechua sense of "to thicken," and the modern dish is documented as a rich, savory-spicy corn stew with roots in Pre-Hispanic times.

The word travels a long way across the Americas, and it does not mean the same thing everywhere. In Mesoamerica a pipián is a seed sauce — built from seeds, chiles, and broth — in which cooks used pumpkin and squash seeds to thicken long before wheat flour or dairy were at hand; its earliest description, a hen cooked with red chile, tomato, and ground pumpkin seeds, was recorded by Sahagún in the sixteenth century. Herrera's Peruvian pepián shares the chili and the poultry but not the thickener: here it is grated fresh corn, not ground seeds, that gives body, so the two dishes are cousins in name and shape rather than one recipe. Peruvian food writing places this corn version specifically in the north of the country, a preparation referenced as a northern Peruvian dish since the nineteenth century.

The recipe reaches Gorriti's 1890 compilation from Francisca Herrera of Lima, and it is spare — a method, not a story. It says nothing of where she learned it, whether she made it as a limeña or carried it from the northern coast where the dish is most at home, or what table it belonged to. Its center is wholly Andean — maize and ají are native staples, joined to Spanish-introduced onion and garlic in the criollo manner — so nothing in it sits out of its time. What the page withholds is only the human context: the corn technique is fully documented, but the road this particular version traveled to a Lima kitchen is not.

Ingredients

• choclo (fresh maize), grated and well ground
• 1 cup broth
• onion
• tomatoes
• garlic
• pepper
• ají amarillo (yellow Andean chili), well ground
• salt
• parboiled chicken or chancho (pork), in pieces
• white corn flour (harina de maíz blanco)

Instructions

1. Grate and grind the choclo, add a cup of broth, and strain through loose cloth, pressing to extract the juice.
2. Make a sauce of plenty of onion, tomatoes, a little garlic and pepper, plenty of ground ají amarillo, and salt.
3. Add the choclo juice and pieces of parboiled chicken or pork; boil well until it thickens.
4. If needed, thicken with a spoonful or two of white corn flour dissolved in broth, stirring so it does not stick; serve once cooked.