January 17 - Making Tamales

I found a recipe for tamales in Cooking Light so I decided to try it.  You would figure in my area finding the fixings for tamales would be pretty easy.  Well, it was not.  No ordinary grocery store had the main ingredients of masa and corn husks.  Way to serve the Latino community Giant and Whole Foods!  So I ended up going to a Latino store in Wheaton.  I was asking the guy behind the counter if I needed masa or if I could use corn meal.  I am not sure he understood but he said masa.  The guy stocking shelves laughed and said something in Spanish about tamales.  I looked at him and said, "you think I can't make tamales?"  He said no no no, I didn't say that.  Uh huh.  Listen bud, I can make tamales.  It's not rocket science you know.

Much like the salt cod a few days before, this was going to take some time.  The recipe was vegetarian--black beans and sweet potato stuffed tamales.  I had to bake the potato and then mix it with jalapeno peppers, onions, beans and cilantro.  Separately, I made the masa, mixing broth and the corn meal and baking powder into a soft dough that had to sit for a while.  The corn husks had to be soaked.  That all took about an hour.

Now it is time to make tamales.  Basically, tamales are corn pone stuffed with something--meat or vegetables.  These are wrapped in a corn husk and steamed. I laid out the corn husk, spread a spoonful of the masa into a square and then spooned on top a bit of the potato beans stuffing.  I then folded the husk so that the masa envelopes the stuffing.  The result is little pockets of stuffed dough wrapped in the husks.

These are then steamed in the oven for an hour.  To do so, I layered them in a steaming pan fully covered with damp towels.  I had to keep my eye on them.  At one point I very nearly caught the towel on fire because it had dried out from the heat.  The end result was delicious.  They were served with Frontera Tomatillo salsa and if you have not had that, get it.  Hot, spicy but seriously addictive.