Humintas (Fresh-Corn Parcels)

Source: Anonymous, 1890

History

The huminta (more often humita) is a parcel of fresh green corn: the ears are picked while the kernels are still full of a sugary milk — choclo — grated and ground to a paste, seasoned, wrapped in the corn's own husk, and steamed. It is a dish that predates European contact in the Andes, still made across Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and northwestern Argentina, and its name carries a Quechua root. That fresh-corn base is what separates it from the tamal, which is built from dried corn treated with lime and ground to masa — a difference this cookbook stages directly, setting the huminta beside a Lima tamale that boils its corn with quicklime before grinding. Here the corn is worked on a batán, the Andean rocking grindstone, then bound with a very little sugar, salt, and lard fried with ají; two husks are crossed, filled, folded, and tied with agave-fiber twine. The author gives three ways to cook them — pot, oven, or guatía — and rates the guatía, an earth oven of fire-heated river stones dug into the ground, the best of all, the same technique long used in the southern Andes to roast potatoes and meat. Much about this particular telling is unrecoverable. It reaches us unsigned, with no contributor name and no stated place, though its mention of the Chuquiapo (Choqueyapu) river, which crosses La Paz, points to Bolivia. And it stops mid-sentence: the description of building and firing the guatía breaks off just as the workers move to knock down the glowing oven, a gap in the source rather than in the practice.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Grate the choclo (fresh corn), then grind it on a batán (Andean grinding stone) or in a stone mortar.
  2. Season the ground corn with salt to taste, a very little sugar, and a good amount of manteca de chancho (pork lard) fried with ají (chili) and passed through a sieve.
  3. Mix everything, stirring and beating it with a spoon.
  4. For each huminta, lay two choclo husks crosswise and place three spoonfuls of the paste in the center.
  5. Fold the husks and tie the parcel with hilo de pita (agave-fiber twine).
  6. Cook the humintas in a pot, an oven, or a guatía (earth oven of heated stones).
  7. If using a pot, fill it one-third with water and lay split cane sticks crosswise over the surface.
  8. Arrange the humintas on the sticks, one atop another, and boil for two hours.
  9. Drain the water and serve the humintas in their wrappings.

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