Humitas

If you were in LAST-101-08, you tried humitas! My mom tried to explain what it was, but I thought it would be interesting to put up the recipe. If you were not in that class, humitas are a traditional ecuadorian food (although variations on humitas run throughout Latin America apparently.) Normally, you would eat humitas for breakfast or as a tea-time snack.

Humitas
Ingredients

30 ears of corn
4 eggs
1/2 cups of butter
1 cup crumbled cheese
2 teaspoons salt
Corn leaves

Preparation
Peel the ears of corn carefully because you will later use the leaves to wrap the humitas. Remove the kernels from the corn, mash them and strain them. To that, add the eggs' yolks, salt and the cheese.

Whip the egg whites until they are stiff and fold them in with the rest of the batter.

In each corn leaf put a big tablespoon of the batter, fold the leaf and tie it firmly with spare strands of corn leaf.

In a big/huge "tamalera" saucepan put 3 cups of water under the first lid, because humitas are steam cooked for about 50 minutes.

En una olla tamalera colocar 3 tazas de agua bajo la primera tapa, porque las humitas se cocinan al vapor, por aproximadamente 50 minutos. Son un plato muy apetecido sobre todo en Semana Santa.