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Masa (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmasa]) is Spanish for dough. In the Americas it is often short for masa de maíz, a maize (corn) dough made from freshly prepared hominy. It is used for making corn tortillas, tamales, pupusas, arepas and many other Latin American dishes. The dried and powdered form is called masa harina, masa de harina, and sometimes maseca, the name of a leading commercial brand. It is reconstituted with water before use.[1] Masa de trigo is Spanish for wheat flour dough. It is also used for making wheat tortillas and other breads and pastries.
To make hominy, field corn (maize) grain is dried and then treated by soaking and cooking the mature (hard) grain in a dilute solution of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) or wood ash, a process termed nixtamalization. Lime and ash are highly alkaline: the alkalinity helps the dissolution of hemicellulose, the major glue-like component of the maize cell walls, and loosens the hulls from the kernels and softens the corn. Some of the corn oil is broken down into emulsifying agents (monoglycerides and diglycerides), while bonding of the corn proteins to each other is also facilitated. The divalent calcium in lime acts as a cross-linking agent for protein and polysaccharide acidic side-chains. [2] As a result, while cornmeal made from untreated ground corn is unable by itself to form a dough on addition of water, the chemical changes in masa allow dough formation, which is essential to the ability to fashion dough into tortillas.
Finally, in addition to providing a source of dietary calcium, the lime reacts with the corn so that the nutrient niacin can be assimilated by the digestive tract. While consumption of untreated corn is a risk factor in predisposition to pellagra, as in African countries, the risk is dramatically reduced or eliminated by nixtamalization. [3] The soaked maize is then washed, and then ground into masa. When fresh masa is dried and powdered, it becomes masa seca or masa harina.
The process of making hominy is also called nixtamalization and the ground product can be called masa nixtamalera. In Central American and Mexican cuisine, masa nixtamalera is cooked with water and milk to make a thick, gruel-like beverage called atole. When made with chocolate and sugar, it becomes atole de chocolate. Adding anise and piloncillo to this mix creates champurrado, a popular breakfast drink.
References [link]
- ^ Kennedy, Diana (1975). The Tortilla. Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-012346-X.
- ^ Harold McGee. On Food and Cooking. Scriber, 2004 Edition. ISBN 0-684-80001-2.
- ^ Food and Agriculture Organization (1992). Maize in human nutrition. United Nations. https://www.fao.org/docrep/T0395E/T0395E00.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
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Masa (musician)
Masa is the stage name of a Japanese musician. While he is not very prominent in the Japanese music scene, he was member of GacktJOB, Gackt's band. He has also been in the disbanded Spiky, Dizzy Drive and マァマァサ☆ムゥ.
Biography
Masa was born on the 30th of September in Kyoto, year unknown. After graduating from a vocational school (専門学校), he went to the U.S.A. alone and took the TOEFL after one year. He then studied music at a university for three years. He learned the English language while living in New York for four years. A day after he graduated from the university, he returned home.
Being raised in a rather strict family and never really having watched TV in his childhood except for educational programs, he came a long way from the boy listening to Bon Jovi on borrowed cassette tapes and singing covers of Kurt Cobain songs to being the accomplished international musician he was later. After buying his first CD, Metallica's "...Justice For All", it was basically the song "One" which inspired him to play the guitar. He started to learn it with getting lessons from an older friend in the neighbourhood who had a band. He paid for the lessons with working as a roadie for them. In junior high and high school years he formed various bands, playing in sessions at first and later in live houses around the area. Feeling restricted by the rules and regulations of the Japanese school system he decided to go to America.
Arzawa
Arzawa in the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE (roughly from late 15th century BCE until the beginning of the 12th century BCE) was the name of a region and a political entity (a "kingdom" or a federation of local powers) in Western Anatolia. The core of Arzawa is believed to have been located along the Kestros River (Küçük Menderes), with its capital at Apasa, later known as Ephesus. When the Hittites conquered Arzawa it was divided into three Hittite provinces: a southern province called Mira along the Maeander River, which would later become known as Caria; a northern province called the Seha River Land, along the Gediz River, which would later become known as Lydia; and an eastern province called Hapalla.
It was the successor state of the Assuwa league, which also included parts of western Anatolia, but was conquered by the Hittites in c. 1400. Arzawa was the western neighbour and rival of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms. On the other hand it was in close contact with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite texts, which corresponds to the Achaeans of Mycenaean Greece. Moreover, Achaeans and Arzawa formed a coalition against the Hittites, in various periods.
Prologue
A prologue or prolog (Greek πρόλογος prólogos, from pro, "before" and lógos, "word") is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Ancient Greek prólogos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance, more like the meaning of preface. The importance, therefore, of the prologue in Greek drama was very great; it sometimes almost took the place of a romance, to which, or to an episode in which, the play itself succeeded.
It is believed that the prologue in this form was practically the invention of Euripides, and with him, as has been said, it takes the place of an explanatory first act. This may help to modify the objection which criticism has often brought against the Greek prologue, as an impertinence, a useless growth prefixed to the play, and standing as a barrier between us and our enjoyment of it. The point precisely is that, to an Athenian audience, it was useful and pertinent, as supplying just what they needed to make the succeeding scenes intelligible. But it is difficult to accept the view that Euripides invented the plan of producing a god out of a machine to justify the action of deity upon man, because it is plain that he himself disliked this interference of the supernatural and did not believe in it. He seems, in such a typical prologue as that to the Hippolytus, to be accepting a conventional formula, and employing it, almost perversely, as a medium for his ironic rationalismo.
Prologue (Elton John album)
Prologue is a grey market album by Elton John featuring music publishing demonstration recordings made in the 1960s. It features four songs with Linda Peters on vocals, who would later marry musician Richard Thompson. Elton sings the remaining titles. The CD is a copy of a promotional 1970 vinyl demo album for producer Joe Boyd's Warlock label. Only 100 of these original vinyl albums are purported to have been made, of which six are known to exist today. The CD is a poor quality copy of a damaged vinyl record. Stylistically, it is very similar to Tumbleweed Connection. The songs are all written by artists signed to Warlock, including Nick Drake and John Martyn.
Track listing
Kyle Cooper
Kyle Cooper (Born July 1962) is an American designer of motion picture title sequences.
Cooper was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and studied interior architecture at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He then went on to study graphic design under Paul Rand at Yale University, receiving his Master of Fine Arts from there in 1988. Early in his professional career, Cooper worked as a creative director at R/GA - an advertising agency with offices in New York and Los Angeles. During this period, Cooper created the title sequence for the 1995 American crime film Seven, a seminal work which received critical acclaim and inspired a number of younger designers. According to Cooper, at the time he made the title sequence for Seven, main title sequences were behind of what was happening in print, music videos and commercials. He wanted to create main titles that were raising the bar creatively.
In 1996, Kyle co-founded Imaginary Forces with Peter Frankfurt and Chip Houghton- one of the most successful creative agencies in Hollywood that came out of the West Coast division of R/GA. "We have spent a long time building and refining a brilliant creative and production team ... Keeping this group together as our own company is truly exciting," commented Cooper about the name change. Too involved by the business-side of running a design company the size of Imaginary Forces, Cooper decided it was time for him to focus more on his creative work. He left Imaginary Forces. In 2003, Cooper founded Prologue, a creative agency in which he works in a small team while concentrating on creating title sequences.
