Some store-bought meals don’t differ terribly a lot from their home made counterparts. Tortillas, nevertheless, should not a part of that class. To chunk right into a heat, sweetly fragrant corn tortilla—produced from freshly floor masa, cradling a heap of pineapple-infused al pastor—is a revelation, one which possible means by no means with the ability to return to the grocery-aisle model.
Shared love of tortillas is what finally introduced Zack and Diana Wangeman, who met as excessive schoolers in Oaxaca, Mexico, collectively as companions in enterprise and life. In 2021, the duo opened Sobre Masa, a brand new restaurant, retail store, and heirloom tortilleria in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. The institution is the primary in New York Metropolis to work strictly with imported heirloom corn.
As a toddler, Zack grew to become fascinated by the chemistry behind how and why substances work collectively, and he dreamed of at some point changing into a pastry chef. So, in 2010, he left Mexico and moved to Manhattan, the place he attended culinary college and labored on the eating places Jean-Georges and Per Se. In the meantime, Diana earned her medical diploma again in Oaxaca, then labored part-time as a doctor and the remainder of the time in her mom’s eating places. Through the years, Zack and Diana stayed in contact and caught up a few times a 12 months each time Zack returned dwelling to go to. “She’s most likely one of many solely folks from highschool that I actively stored in contact with,” he recollects. “We had a particular relationship.”
In 2018, Zack started cooking Oaxacan meals in a pop-up referred to as Comadre Cocina that ultimately discovered a everlasting dwelling within the now-closed Brooklyn brewery Folksbier. Dishes like mole almendrado, garnachas, and chorizo have been his reply to the rising nostalgia he felt for the delicacies of his dwelling area. “[The pop-up] actually allowed me the liberty and the platform to do no matter I needed,” says Zack. As a lot as doable, he took care to organize substances from scratch, making queso fresco and drying herbs himself.
One of many extra elusive parts to his set-up was a key pillar of the entire operation: high-quality tortillas. In New York Metropolis, Zack struggled to search out ones that have been made with Mexican heirloom corn, or captured the flavour and essence of the tortillas he had grown up consuming. “The scent is the factor I search for probably the most,” he explains. “You simply get that aroma of, like, popcorn”—worlds aside from the faintly bitter scent of most store-bought tortillas, which often embody preservatives that improve their shelf life but additionally make them tougher and drier. Maybe, Zack thought, he might make them by hand himself. So he purchased a mill and started training the science and artwork of nixtamalization.
“Good masa comes from nixtamalization,” he explains, referring to the intricate strategy of cooking corn kernels in an alkaline resolution of calcium hydroxide, which not solely breaks down the pores and skin and makes the vitamins obtainable for absorption, but additionally gelatinizes the starches and creates pliability. The corn is then floor into masa, which is pressed into tortillas. “Good masa will solely ever have three issues: calcium hydroxide, water, and corn,” he says.
When Zack returned to Oaxaca, he visited Diana to speak together with her and her mom about nixtamalization and heirloom corn. If anybody in his group knew a factor or two about it, it was her household. Many farmers in Diana’s dwelling village of Teotitlán del Valle have been rising corn for generations, and proceed to comply with conventional cultivation strategies.
Rising up, Diana noticed folks implementing historic agricultural strategies like milpa, a follow that includes rising corn, squash, and beans collectively in what Zack calls a “symbiotic relationship”: the beans climb up the corn, whereas the squash gives cowl for the soil. Crop variety additionally helps enrich the soil, not like the single-crop system that almost all agricultural companies undertake, which might pressure soil to develop a dependence on fertilizers. Different strategies Diana noticed as a toddler in her village can solely be defined as well-practiced instinct: “My grandparents, they only see the sky, they usually’re like…‘It’s time to begin planting the seeds,’” she says, explaining that farmers time this step to only earlier than the beginning of the moist season.
The traditional knowledge behind heirloom corn cultivation in Mexico and the complexities of nixtamalization and tortilla-making fascinated Zack. Every time he returned to Oaxaca, he would observe and be taught from Diana’s mom whereas she made tortillas.
In September 2019, Zack left Folksbier to take a while off in Mexico. However in March 2020, his mom handed away, and the start of the pandemic compelled everybody to shelter in place. As time in quarantine wore on, his thoughts stored returning to the thought of opening his personal enterprise, which the success of Comadre Cocina had inspired him to contemplate. Within the wake of a household tragedy and within the midst of a worldwide pandemic, engaged on a mission gave him hope and one thing to sit up for. He started placing collectively a marketing strategy for a tortilleria and, in Could 2020, moved again to New York Metropolis.
Just a few months later, Zack opened Sobre Masa as a pop-up promoting tortillas in Williamsburg, whereas he appeared for a extra everlasting dwelling for the operation in Bushwick. In December of that 12 months, Zack recommended to Diana that she ought to come to New York to assist him. She agreed and flew to hitch him, however the metropolis shut down indoor eating shortly after, and the pop-up needed to shut. All through that winter, Zack and Diana centered on promoting tortillas wholesale. “It was simply the 2 of us urgent tortillas the entire day,” she recollects.
In October 2021, Sobre Masa lastly opened the doorways of its everlasting dwelling in Bushwick.
Zack and Diana needed to make tortillas in a means that tasted like dwelling, they usually additionally needed to “be a voice for corn,” says Zack. So that they started working with Tamoa, a Mexico Metropolis-based firm that sources surplus manufacturing of heirloom crops from small farms in Mexico and units up provide networks that assist generate revenue and alternatives for these producers.
In latest a long time, an array of challenges have endangered the preservation of Mexico’s native corn varieties. US-imported corn flowed into the nation after the implementation of the North American Free Commerce Settlement in 1994, taking enterprise from small native growers. As a result of flour manufacturers needed white corn, farmers cultivated much less and fewer of the varieties that exhibited different colours. However Mexico’s heirloom corn has deep-rooted cultural worth—and environmental knowledge to share.
Mexico is dwelling to dozens of native corn varieties which were cultivated for millennia—inherited, guarded, and preserved by every subsequent era. “These crops are the livelihood and identification and tradition of a complete territory and nation,” says Tamoa’s co-founder Francisco Musi. Corn is the spine of Mexico’s foodways, options in lots of of the nation’s dishes, and has nourished numerous generations of Mexican folks. “It’s as a result of all our ancestors, particularly in Mexico, simply took such excellent care of nurturing this plant,” provides Zack. “It’s been woven into our on a regular basis lives.”
The flavour, dietary worth, and hardiness of heirloom corn, Musi explains, drastically surpass these of its mass-grown counterparts, that are particularly bred to attain excessive yields. These ensuing earnings can come at a price: soil erosion, lack of genetic variety, and different ecological injury.
“Heirloom seeds have an innate capability of adapting. That’s what they’ve been doing all through historical past,” explains Musi. “They’re very in tune with the surroundings and their environment.” Corn was historically irrigated by rain in Mexico, so the vegetation needed to adapt to risky climate situations. After every rising cycle, the seeds that survived have been those farmers sowed the next season. Over millennia of choice, heirloom seeds have developed to change into hardy, resilient, and genetically numerous. “There are all these totally different varieties which might be designed to thrive in that specific [environment],” provides Zack. “This variety is necessary to advertise and defend.”
The genetic health of those seeds resulted from the traditional knowledge of generations of stewards, and strengthening these farmers’ sovereignty is important for preserving native crops. “They’ll actually be the brokers of change for the longer term,” he says, referring to heirloom growers and their deep instincts for nurturing the land. Many of those small-scale producers additionally make the most of sustainable agricultural approaches that defend the surroundings, like counting on pure compost over chemical fertilizers. By advocating for heirloom farmers, prospects like Sobre Masa will help maintain heirloom seeds, construct consciousness round their ecological and dietary worth, and promote their stewards’ eco-conscious practices.
At Sobre Masa, Zack and Diana make an effort to teach prospects concerning the worth of Mexican heirloom corn and the tales behind them. The menu shares the rotating varieties’ names and locations of origin so prospects can be taught extra concerning the variety of Mexico’s native corn. As a result of various kinds of corn behave otherwise throughout nixtamalization and milling, Jesus Perea, who handles all of the tortilla-making at Sobre Masa and is now a co-owner, tweaks the steps for every selection. After urgent masa into tortillas, Perea cooks them midway earlier than they’re bought to prospects. “That means, once they purchase our tortillas and [warm them] at dwelling, they’ve the privilege of seeing their tortillas being inflated,” he says. Additionally they are available an array of colours—white, yellow, pink, and blue—which not solely replicate the variety of Mexico’s corn but additionally look pleasing on the plate. “There are not any synthetic colours,” he provides. “It’s naturally the colour of the corn.”
At present, the fact of Sobre Masa is just a little totally different than the tortilla manufacturing unit Zack and Diana envisioned again in 2020. Through the day, the brick-and-mortar store additionally sells masa, pastries, espresso, and different merchandise, earlier than the restaurant portion opens within the night and serves cocktails, flan, and naturally, tacos topped with al pastor, bistec, or cauliflower. The crew now makes 4,000 to five,000 tortillas a day—and Zack and Diana’s friendship has additionally developed. “We have been spending a lot time collectively and—[even] extra particular—constructing one thing collectively, the place you would see roots and you would see development,” says Zack. “It simply appears pure one thing would ultimately blossom.”
Maybe a shared aim is what it took to show their spark right into a flame. Sobre Masa’s mission—to honor and bolster the heirloom seeds and farmers of Mexico—continues to encourage the 2, who at the moment are married.
The Spanish phrase “sobre masa” interprets as “about masa,” however the title can also be a play on phrases: “Sobremesa is a dialog you will have after dinner,” says Zack, describing the communion and repartee that usually lingers lengthy after meal companions have completed consuming. The title captures the sense of group that Zack and Diana are seeing develop across the preservation of Mexican heirloom seeds, they usually hope that enthusiasm continues to develop.
Sobre Masa just lately broke its document of most corn cooked in a single day: 275 kilos, which can produce 500 kilos of masa. If the restaurant’s development is any indication, the way forward for heirloom corn is wanting up.
“We’ve got unconditional, limitless blind religion that the very best is but to come back,” says Zack.
