The other night I watched my favorite program on Food Network called "Good Eats" with Alton Brown. This is a show that delves into the history of whatever chosen topic the show is about, and often the scientific reasons behind the way foods interact to make the chosen dish. Between acts, or as a segue to commercial, there are usually snippets of text on-screen that explain something in the program. That, and the show is usually funny as hell!
The episode I watched last was the second in a series about tortillas (The first was about a year back entitled "Tort-illa Reform". Get it? Hah!) This program went over ways to reuse tortillas that have been previously made and are now in "leftover" status. There were some great recipes, including a "Mexican Lasagna" using a spicy sauce, cooked chicken, Oaxaca cheese and leftover tortillas.
The last segment was a recipe for "Masa Tots", little balls of masa flour, with spices therein, then deep fried like tater tots. This was to demonstrate how tortillas could be turned back into its original, constituent parts...one of which is masa flour.
In a segue to commercial, the text on screen told how tortillas are made. Dried corn, or maize, is "nixtamalized" and ground into masa flour, then formed into tortillas.
Nixtamalized? What the hell is that?! That is a new word on me. I love words, and I try to learn a new word or two every day and find some way to work it into conversation. But "nixtamalized"? Good gracious.
I was watching while laying in bed, the light out, firmly intending on going to sleep after the program was over. But "nixtamalized" was floating through my head and I could not stop thinking about it. It eventually got the better of me and I had to find out what it meant.
I had been trying to do some work earlier in the evening, so my laptop was in my bedroom leaning up against the wall opposite my bed, plugged in and charging. It was only in sleep mode, so I got up, grabbed it and flipped it open. I went to my usual resource for words, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, http://www.m-w.com/, intending to define the word.
It wasn't there.
I was hoping that they did not just make up this word. That would be unlikely. So, I googled it. There were plenty of entries. One of which was for Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/, another of my favorite...albeit with some skepticism...resources on the web.
In there I found an exhaustive explanation of the nixtamalization process, and I quote...
Nixtamalizacion, a Spanish loanword sometimes anglicised to nixtamalisation or nixtamalization, is the process whereby dry maize grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, usually limewater, to cause the transparent outer hull, the pericarp, to separate and be removed from the grain. This process has several benefits including enabling the grain to be more effectively ground; increasing protein and vitamin content availability; improving flavor and aroma and reduction of mycotoxins. In the Aztec language Nahuatl, the word for the product of this procedure is nixtamalli or nextamalli (IPA: [niʃtaˈmalːi] or [neʃtaˈmalːi]), which in turn has yielded Mexican Spanish nixtamal (IPA: [nistaˈmal] or [niʃtaˈmal]). The Nahuatl word is a compound of nextli "ashes" and tamalli "unformed corn dough, tamal." The term nixtamalization (spelled with the "t") can also be used to describe the removal of the pericarp from any grain such as sorghum by an alkali process. When the unaltered Spanish spelling nixtamalizacion is used in written English, however, it almost exclusively refers to maize.
I was relieved. Now I get it. This is similar to how people make hominy: corn is cooked in an extremely alkaline solution of lye...LYE of all things!...to make large, funkadelic, mutant white kernels of hominy. My grandparents loved the stuff. Too weird for me.
I was going to blog this last night, but I didn't because I was tired. I'm kinda glad I waited because Shari over on "My So-Called Japanese Life" blogged about Wikipedia and how recently a few more institutions of higher learning are now disallowing Wikipedia as a reference.
This, in my opinion, is a good idea. Since Wikipedia, in and of itself a good idea, is written by everyone on the internet, there is a big risk of getting ahold of bad or incomplete information or information that is interpreted incorrectly. Wikipedia can be a great resource, though. Just like I found out what nixtamalization meant, one can pretty much find out everything they want to know about from there. You have to take it with a grain of salt, however. There have, in the past, been bullshit articles posted with lots of disinformation as proof-of-concept that the articles can be manipulated and twisted to give people false impressions or make people look really, really stupid.
For the casual user, a quick search is harmless. For academics or business users that need to find information about a subject quickly, Wikipedia can give you a good idea of what a subject is all about. You must look into it further with the references that are given at the bottom of nearly every article. Even the referenced data can be interpreted incorrectly or not at all. Some subject pages on Wikipedia don't have a single reference!
In the end, if a subject is important and you have to know all about it, Wikipedia is a great starting point. But ONLY a starting point. Look at the references, check them out, go to the library and look at the books on the subject. Research that depends on a single resource is flawed research, and research the depends exclusively on Wikipedia is definitely flawed and dangerous.
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