Making Chicos Part Dos
November 07, 2006
As promised, here is Part Dos of the Chicos post. The photo illustrations take the chico making process described in last week's post through to the end. We left off last when Faustina placed the last of her corn in the horno for roasting and mudded up the doors. The picture here is of her and her comadre washing their hands of the mud used to seal the doors closed for the night. The horno door, if you notice, is being chipped away here the next morning. The door had mud bricks on the inside of the oven, and a layer of adobe on the outside.
After breaking down the doors which were extremely hot from the overnight fire, Faustina reach into the oven with a pitchfork and her bare hands to remove the husks from the dying the embers. She placed the corn in a wheelbarrow and moved them to the back of a pick-up truck where myself, Faustina's comadre, and her brother stood with small paring knives.
At the truck bed, each of us took the corn husks, pulled them back, stripping the excess layers of silk and husk. We cut off the bottom stem of the corn to shorten it for drying. Faustina gathered each ear of corn we cleaned and she braided the thinned husks together to form a ristra. A ristra is made with corn or chiles by stringing the chiles or corn to dry outside in the sun. Faustina quickly braided about 12 ears of corn together to be strung up on her drying rack pictured here.
Chicos need to be dried in the sunshine for several days until the kernels turn hard and wither into a dark brown. The chicos are then taken off the drying rack and rubbed together to remove the dried kernels. At this point, they can be stored in plastic bags or containers for storage year-round until they are cooked.Faustina sent me the product of our labor not to long ago and I made quite a delicious chico soup. I promise to post that recipe for your enjoyment as well. Again, I'd like to acknowledge Faustina's kindness and generosity for taking the time to expose me to such an ancient art of food preparation.
Labels: corn, New Mexico, traditional
