Asakiyume mita

Things have been stressful around here--there was a health scare for a family member, but they're quite fine now, happy to say.

But there are a number of nice things, too. Last week I took R to a doctor's appointment, and afterward, we had a meal together, including some siwa (also romanized suwa), a Eritrean homemade fermented drink. I think I've posted about it before, but I can't find the post, so maybe not? Maybe I just talked to some of you about it. R has brewed it in a blue Lego container, one that once upon a time held those bigger-style Lego bricks. Now it contains a modestly alcoholic drink! And she has a gorgeous handmade strainer for it. If you click through to a larger size of the photo, you can see the mesh.



And I'm going back to Leticia, Amazonas, Colombia! By myself, leaving this coming weekend and coming back the following weekend. I'm terrible at preparing appropriate presents and gifts and things, but I have some stuff like maple syrup, locally made earrings, and picture books, and I'm happy with these clothespins, that I decorated myself. I hang out laundry, and they hang out laundry, and I like decorated, useful things, so maybe they will too. I have three households I'm bringing stuff to, so these will be divided into three sets. (This photo is click-through-able too, if you want to see it larger.)



Truth is, at this state of pre-trip, I'm in the dying-of-anxiety phase, but it'll be fine once I get there. I hope!

This entry repeats some of the stuff I said about brewing chicha in this entry, but consider this the revised, improved, and expanded version ;-)

In the rhyme "this is the house that jack built," there are these lines:

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built. (etc.)

The picture always is of a sack. For example...


(Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections)

I never actually knew what malt was.

Fast-forward to my project with my tutee to make El Salvadoran chicha. The first step involved sprouting corn--keeping it warm and moist so it would put out a root and a little shoot... at which point, so my tutee told me (receiving instructions from her mother), we were supposed to wash the corn and... take off the root and the shoot. Well then WHY are we growing them? I wondered.

The answer is that when the corn starts sprouting, it makes an enzyme that turns starch into sugar, and we want this in the brewing process. I discovered this after my first attempt at getting the corn to sprout resulted in a moldy mess. I searched "sprouted corn brewing" on the interwebs and discovered this fact... and that sprouted grain is called malt. And that it keeps. So after you have sprouted it and taken the root and shoot off (this feels so cruel--poor corn just wants to make a corn plant, and you're stymying it), you can put it in a sack in your attic to feed a rat ... or for future brewing.

(Photo I sent to my tutee, in distress about my mold problem. You can see all the white roots, but also the strong yellow shoots, e.g. in the kernel directly above the red circle)



Take two was more successful. (This photo is earlier in the sprouting process--showing just roots, no shoots)




After washing, derooting, and desprouting the corn, you put it in a big old container with a tight lid and feed it water and--if you're making El Salvadoran chicha--panela (sugarcane juice that's been boiled down and thickened) each day. And for the first three days, you throw the liquid away each new day, but from the fourth day on you keep it and keep adding to it: more water, more panela, and, for flavor, you put in the rind of a pineapple.

during the first three days


from the fourth day


I decanted on day six or seven. It is only very mildly alcoholic--it would have gotten more alcoholic if I let it sit--but it did have a yeasty bite and a definite flavor of the panela and pineapple, very rich and sweet. I have NO IDEA if it tasted right, and how's this for humor: my tutee is very strict about no drugs, no alcohol, so she had never had it, so she wasn't sure if it was either. But her roommate is also from El Salvador and promised us it tasted just right. Maybe she was just humoring us? But maybe it really was right! La chicha salvadoreña de Lorena, mamá de S, my tutee :-)



total produced


The moldy malt I dumped into the compost bin, and it flourished:



I've transplanted it and now have some good-looking corn plants. In my experience, corn never does well with me--I get tiny ears with a couple of weird monster kernels and nothing else, but maybe this year will be different! We'll see.