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Iroquois Leaf Bread
Scrape green corn from the cob and mash it to a paste. Season with salt and pepper and roll into tamales like small bananas, 4-5 inches long by 1 inch diameter. Then roll in corn husks like tamales, too, tuck in the ends, tie securely and boil 45 minutes. Eat hot with butter or bacon grease.
A simple corn dumpling that needs only fresh sweet corn and its own husks. The one thing that decides success is the moisture of the paste.
- Green corn"Green corn" means fresh corn at the milk stage, not a green-colored variety. Modern supersweet hybrids tend to be wetter and sweeter than the older varieties this would have been made with, so the mash may come out looser; drain off excess liquid or work in a spoonful or two of cornmeal to get a paste that holds a shape.
- Scraping the cobCut the kernel tops off first, then scrape the cob with the back of the knife to release the milky interior. That scrapings-and-milk mixture is what binds the loaves, so do not discard it.
- HusksSave the husks as you shuck, choosing the wide inner leaves. Fresh husks are pliable; dried ones need a 20-30 minute soak in hot water. You will want two or three overlapping leaves per loaf to keep water out.
- TyingKitchen twine or a strip torn lengthwise from a husk both work. Wrap so the seams overlap and the ends fold back over the body of the loaf, otherwise boiling water gets in and the paste washes out into the pot.
- Boiling timeForty-five minutes at a steady simmer is right for loaves of the stated size; a hard rolling boil batters the packets apart. They are done when the loaf is set and firm enough to slice rather than spoon.
- YieldSix ears of corn gives roughly eight to ten loaves of the size described, enough for four as a side dish.
- ServingUnwrap at the table while hot. As the loaves cool they firm up considerably, and cold leftovers are good sliced and fried in bacon fat.
Corn boiled or steamed in its own husk is one of the oldest preparations of the plant in eastern North America, and versions were recorded among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and their neighbors long before camp-cooking manuals picked them up. Traditional Haudenosaunee versions often worked green corn together with beans or berries and wrapped the mass in husks or basswood leaves before boiling, which is where the "leaf bread" name comes from. The comparison to tamales in this version is the author's, aimed at readers who would recognize the Mexican dish more readily than the northeastern one; the two share the logic of using the plant's own wrapper as a cooking vessel, which is exactly why the dish suits a camp with a pot and no baking equipment. The suggestion of bacon grease is the mark of the outdoor cookbook rather than the older tradition, where rendered fat or maple sweetening would have served.