Saká

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy clay olla or 4-quart stockpot
• •Wooden spoon for stirring
• •High-powered blender (or a metate if you have one and know how to use it)
• •Fine-mesh sieve
• •Jícara gourd cups or hand-painted ceramic mugs from Ticul for serving

Instructions

1. 1

   Choose the corn

   Use white field corn, ixi'im in Maya, the same variety the milperos grow for tortillas. Do not use sweet corn. Do not use yellow corn. Do not use hominy. This drink is defined by the absence of nixtamalization, and the corn must be whole, dry, and white. Rinse the kernels in cold water and pick out anything broken, blackened, or shriveled. Saká is an offering before it is a drink. The corn has to be worthy.

   If you cannot find white field corn, look at any tienda that serves a Maya community. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado. They know which sack is for tortillas and which sack is for atole.
2. 2

   Understand what you are not doing

   You are not making atole de masa. You are not making champurrado. You are not nixtamalizing. There is no cal in this pot. There is no lime, no ash, no alkaline anything. That absence is the entire point. Saká is corn cooked in plain water, the corn the gods receive before it has been transformed by human hands. The Maya milperos call this the food of Cháak, the rain god. Treat the recipe with the respect that origin demands.

3. 3

   Simmer the corn

   Place the rinsed corn in a heavy clay olla or a stockpot with the three liters of water. The water should be clean and untreated. The h-men, the Maya priests who still perform the Ch'a Cháak rain ceremony in Yucatán, draw it from a cenote at first light. In your kitchen, use spring water or filtered water. No chlorine. No tap. The drink carries the flavor of the water it was made with. Bring the pot to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Do not boil hard. A rolling boil tears the kernels and clouds the liquid.

4. 4

   Cook slow and patient

   Simmer uncovered for one hour to one hour and twenty minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. The kernels will swell, soften, and split open along the seam. The water will go from clear to milky white as the corn starches release. That cloudy white color is where the name comes from. Saká means white water in Maya. When the kernels are tender enough to crush easily between two fingers, the corn is ready. Pull the pot from the heat and let it rest for fifteen minutes.

5. 5

   Blend until smooth

   In the milpa, the corn is ground on a metate while still warm and then thinned with the cooking water. In the kitchen, a blender does the same work. Ladle the cooked corn with its liquid into the blender in two or three batches. Blend each batch on high for two full minutes. The mixture should be completely smooth, the color of bone, almost the consistency of thin cream. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve back into the clean pot, pressing the solids to extract everything. Discard the hulls that remain in the sieve.

   If you have a metate and you know how to use it, use it. The texture is different and so is the flavor. A blender is a compromise. An honest one, but still a compromise.
6. 6

   Warm and serve

   Return the strained liquid to the pot over low heat. Warm it through, stirring constantly so it does not catch on the bottom. Do not let it boil again. For the ceremonial offering, the saká is served exactly here. Nothing added. No sugar. No salt. No spice. The drink that the milpero places on the altar for Cháak before the rains is pure corn and pure water. Así se hace y punto.

   If saká is for the household and not the offering, this is where the canela goes in to warm with the liquid, and the melipona honey is stirred in at the very end off the heat. The ceremonial version takes none of it.
7. 7

   Serve in jícara

   Ladle the warm saká into small jícaras, the gourd cups the Maya have used for centuries, or into hand-painted ceramic mugs from Ticul. The drink should be warm, not hot. It tastes of cooked corn and clean water and almost nothing else. That is the dish. People used to a sweetened atole will be surprised. They are tasting the oldest version of a corn drink that has survived in this hemisphere. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

Chef Tips

• •Sourcing the corn is the whole battle. White field corn for atole, sometimes labeled maíz para atole or maíz blanco, is sold at any tienda that serves a Maya or central-Mexican community. Do not substitute hominy, popcorn, sweet corn, or yellow corn. Each one gives you a different drink, and none of them is saká.
• •Water matters more than people think. The Maya use cenote water because the cenotes are sacred and the water is mineral-clean. Chlorinated tap water dulls the flavor and leaves a chemical edge. Use filtered or spring water. The drink is essentially corn and water, so the water is half of what you taste.
• •Melipona honey from Yucatán's native stingless bees is the traditional sweetener for the household version. It is rare and expensive outside the peninsula. If you cannot find it, a good wildflower honey is a fair compromise. Do not use sugar. Saká is not a sugared drink.
• •For the ceremonial saká, add nothing. No canela. No honey. No salt. Cooks who sweeten the offering have not understood what the offering is.

Advance Preparation

• •Saká is best within a few hours of being made. The corn starches break down and the texture turns gluey by the next day. For the ceremonial version, make it the morning of the offering.
• •If you must hold it, refrigerate up to one day and rewarm gently over low heat with a splash of fresh water to loosen the consistency. Stir constantly. Do not boil.
• •The corn itself can be cooked one day ahead and held in its liquid in the refrigerator. Blend and strain the day you serve.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 250g)