Red Jacket Masa

This Red Jacket Masa was milled to order for our Heirloom Bean and Grain Club. There are just a few left of this very special ingredient so get them while you can. Red Jacket Masa is crafted by Chef Dave Smoke McClusky from a mix of rare Mohawk Red Flour Corn and a Mexican landrace corn. It is named after the great Seneca Chief Red Jacket. It has a delicious sweet corn smell with a slight hint of smoke and an incredible taste and texture. 

Mohawk Red Corn, sometimes called Mohawk Red Bread Corn, is one of the rarest and oldest corn varieties still in existence. In 2016,Rowen White, a renowned seed keeper, farmer, educator, and member of Mohawk Akwesasne tribal community brought the last known cob of Mohawk Red to the Native American Seed Sanctuary in the Hudson Valley where it was grown in hopes that it could be not only saved from extinction but rematriated to its ancestral land. In the Haudenosaunee (Mohawk) tradition, Corn Mother is a female spirit and all seeds belong to her. Corn was so much more than food, it was linked to traditions and rites of passage central to the community. The Mohawk Red was used to create ceremonial wedding cornbread. Today there are just a handful of small farms growing this special corn.

ABOUT CORN MAFIA

Once upon a pandemic a Mohawk chef found a new calling and the results are irresistible. Chef Dave Smoke McCluskey, founder of Corn Mafia closed his restaurant to pursue his passion for the most important of all indigenous ingredients, corn. These corns or O:nenhste as they say in Mohawk, are sourced from landrace, Indigenous farmed or organic sources. He nixtamalizes all of his corn with wood ash, a traditional technique from his ancestors that introduces a slightly smoky quality. Some people think Indigenous foods are or were bland. These products are meant to act as a foil to such unadventurous thoughts. What’s old is new, what’s old will never leave us.