The Unique Relationship Between Human and Corn with Jorge Gaviria of Masienda

The latest episode of the You Can’t Eat Money podcast is with Jorge Gaviria, founder of Masienda, and author of the hit history-slash-cookbook ‘Masa’. If you aren’t familiar with Masienda, it is a company that originally started by working with subsistence, smallholder heirloom corn farmers in Mexico, to source corn for chefs like Enrique Olvera or Pujol and Cosme. After originally introducing its tortillas to the market, Masienda broke into the mainstream with its masa harina – aka an instant corn dough mix that makes it super easy to make your own tortillas, tostadas and gorditas at home – product during the COVID-19 pandemic. The brand now offers a wide range of Masa Harinas made from a variety of corn, its own corn mill and speciality products like champurrado mix, avocado leaves, and Chicatana ants. In this episode we discuss… – How Jorge started Masienda, including using his role at Blue Hill at Stone Barns to its full advantage – Convincing Enrique Olvera to give Masienda a shot for his restaurant Cosme – The very important relationship between human and corn – Why he decided to write what many consider the definitive book on Masa – Working with smallholder, subsistence farmers in Mexico Here are some relevant links from the episode… Masienda – https://masienda.com MASA, the book – https://masienda.com/pages/masa-book Milpa farming system – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milpa Dave Arnold’s Masa blog post – https://cookingissues.com/2011/03/09/mesoamerican-miracle-megapost-tortillas-and-nixtamalization/ Masienda YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/masienda