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Post by grano on Feb 7, 2016 18:31:05 GMT -5
I recently discovered this Peruvian or Andean food. I would like to understand it better. I know it is made from dried sweet maize. I don't know if the maize was simply dehydrated or partially cooked. I think the word cancha refers to the final, cooked food, which is prepared like popcorn. Chulpe seems to refer to the type of maize, but I don't know if it is a specific variety. Ditto chulpino.
I like cancha better than popcorn or parched flour corn. For pure essential maize flavor, parched flour corn may be the best. However, cancha has a deep flavor combined with a satisfying texture that has both crunch and chew. It swells more than parched corn, but less than popcorn. It is not noticably sweet. Popcorn is boring by comparison.
I am wondering if any dried sweet maize will work.
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Post by blueadzuki on Feb 7, 2016 19:07:39 GMT -5
Maiz Chulpe is basically Andean sweet corn; the sweet version of mountain Cancha*. It's a bit bigger kerneled than northern sweets, since cancha corns are pretty big kerneled. You can usually find bags of it at Latin supermarkets.
*now I have an interesting image in my mind; I wonder what a sweet version of Cuzco Gigante corn would look like!
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Post by Walk on Feb 8, 2016 9:49:53 GMT -5
I recently discovered this Peruvian or Andean food. I would like to understand it better. I know it is made from dried sweet maize. I don't know if the maize was simply dehydrated or partially cooked. I think the word cancha refers to the final, cooked food, which is prepared like popcorn. Chulpe seems to refer to the type of maize, but I don't know if it is a specific variety. Ditto chulpino. I like cancha better than popcorn or parched flour corn. For pure essential maize flavor, parched flour corn may be the best. However, cancha has a deep flavor combined with a satisfying texture that has both crunch and chew. It swells more than parched corn, but less than popcorn. It is not noticably sweet. Popcorn is boring by comparison. I am wondering if any dried sweet maize will work. This may be what we call "corn nuts". One night my husband, Bob, was going to make some popcorn. We didn't have any electricity at the time and so by candle light he grabbed what he thought was the jar of popcorn and poured some into the hot oil. But as soon as he had done it he realized that the jar was sweet corn, mature and dry, like it was being saved for seed or in our case being used for grinding into cornmeal. He was going to dump it out but I suggested that he fry it a bit to see what it would do. It proceeded to "pop" and when it seemed done, he used a slotted spoon to fish it out of the oil. A bit of salt on it - fabulous! It didn't absorb much oil, unlike popcorn. We thought we had discovered the best new thing, but it's probably a very old technique if it is indeed what you're describing. Interestingly, I was recently looking through an old copy of Gene Logsdon's "Small-Scale Grain Raising" and he mentions putting sweet corn kernels in with popcorn for extra interest. There are no new ideas. After more than 30 years of enjoying parched sweet corn we've found that most any of the old o.p. varieties work well. The modern extra sweet types seem to have kernels that are too small, although we only tried this once. In taste comparisons, the sweet corn varieties we parched won out over the flour corns, even Supai Red. Bob says that his preparation "secret" is to use a wok, stir the kernels about 2 to 4 times per minute to ensure even heating (being careful that popping kernels don't fly out of the pan which should have a cover), and removing the kernels from the hot oil as soon as they are done popping to keep them from overcooking/tasting burnt.
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