Montezuma's Revenge

[OLS]

Back in my bachelor days, which actually have extended to 48 here lately, I used to make a dish for my roomates
called Montezuma's Revenge. It was reasonably apt naming. For the uninitiated, it could provoke an outbreak of
the actual M.R. It came about when my mother gave me a book called "The Save Your Own Life Diet" Now I don't
diet, but I do love my Mother. Diets are for people who have to be given a regimen in order to accomplish the
same thing as plain old will power in the end, eat less and excercise. And ironically plain will power will get you as
far as the diet, and without one, you can't hope for the other to work anyway, so why add a middleman? But after
reading this line, I HAD to make this dish. I am paraphrasing here, but basically in order to have bowel movements
that were firm, bulky and relatively odor free, you should eat this or that or the other thing from a list. One of the
things was Corn Masa.

So I get a sack of this kind of corn flour and I make a dough, and I roll out thin strips of masa and fry em in oil.
Diet circumvented, lol. I take a layer of these fried strips of thin masa meal and layer them with 2 kinds of cheese
like lasagna in a pan. Jalapenos can be added to add the final insult to Montezuma's Revenge, and it will hurt.

Also add layers of meat sauce created by browning a pound of ground meat, draining fat (yay, savings) and then
adding a chopped onion to the meat, sauteeing the onion til clear. Add a half-tablespoon of cumin, two tablespoons
of chili powder, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a can of tomato sauce and one of tomato paste, and salt and your
choice of pepper to personal taste. Simmer til thick. Combine cheese, meat and strips of masa in layers to make
a lasagna and top with cheese again. The flavor is phenomenal. The $hi+ will be the opposite of firm, bulky and
relatively odor free, but the dish, if you can stand to make it after me mentioning BMs twice, is awesome.

By the way, that diet worked, but the most important thing was the relatively odor free. It was true.
Not in THISrecipe, but the foods worked well in concert and for the most part the book was NOT a POS.

[Lear31MX]

If i'm not mistaken is fried corn mesa the same thing as corn chips, Fritos?

[OLS]

Yes and no, the masa obviously has no salt unless you put it in there. Also corn chips are loaded with other crap.
If you are saying is it corn meal, yes and technically you could make your own fritos with masa. That's basically
what I did, made lasagna sized "noodles" out of it and fried it up in about a half inch of oil, flipping it halfway to get
em done on both sides. And yes again, it is just a high tech frito pie, lol.

[Tio Gato]

I was wondering if you can substitute the cumin for... oh oh I gotta run to the bathroom just from reading this recipe.

[emopunker2004]

[markem]

Those of us who have celiac sprue and cannot eat wheat, rye or barley, know this trick well. Using your own masa allows you to reduce salt intake from corn products drastically. You can also make your own polenta with masa - I like the smoother texture better.