Yesterday I took my maiden voyage into tamal-making for our Halloween dinner party using Rick Bayless's recipes for Basic Tamal Dough and Chicken in Green Chile Filling.
At first I was a bit squeamish about using lard in the tamal dough, but I got over it. I figured if I was going to spend a whole day making these, I should do exactly what Rick tells me because he is the master (we went to Chicago last weekend and had dinner at Xoco, the newest jewel in his restaurant empire—it was fantastic. More on that trip later). And science to the rescue: a bit of research uncovered that lard has less saturated fat (bad) and more monounsaturated fat (good) than butter, plus zero trans fat unlike vegetable shortening. (I found this data by doing a basic search on the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference; also, interesting article on the lard renaissance here.) You'll want the fresh, tan-colored stuff (not the white, shelf-stable, hydrogenated kind), which I've usually seen sold in quart- or gallon-sized buckets at Latino markets.
Being a novice at making tamales, I was worried that these would be a huge fail, but they weren't too difficult to assemble and turned out amazingly light, fluffy, and flavorful. I think the trickiest part was spreading the tamal dough onto the corn husk, and I found it easiest and fastest to use a silicone spatula for that step. The hardest part was not having enough counter space to spread everything out—I think I'll have to make these (or a variation using banana leaves) again in my parents' kitchen during the holidays.
Oh, and the strands of white on the black beans in the photo is melted Oaxaca cheese—a grand discovery at our local supermercado. I was on the phone with TJ while he was doing the grocery shopping and all of a sudden he stopped and said, WHOA. For a second I was worried that something was wrong but actually he had just laid his eyes on the cheese. A very large ball of fresh Oaxaca cheese. I think it's a new item (which they'll hopefully keep in stock) since we're always on the lookout for it and hadn't seen it there before.
2 comments:
yum yum yum
The best way to get really good at spreading the masa is the old fashioned way - do it a million times in a row. The SB Spanish Branch made tamales one year as a Girls Camp fundraiser; we started the process at 6 PM and I didn't lock the doors until 4:30 AM. We used plain metal spoons, BTW. Because that's what was in the kitchen at the church.
Anyway, these look like the turned out great. Keep trying, you'll get really fast the more you make. Well, faster at prepping. Slower and fatter at most athletic attempts if you don't share the wealth!
One final thought: why, oh why, aren't there enough Mexicans in Florida for us to find decent Mexican food products?
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