Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Tamale Time

The decision to make tamales last night turned into something of an adventure. I had the ingredients, I had a plan, but I did not have a recipe. The internet was out, leaving me with just a couple of guidelines:
>Tamale dough is basically biscuit dough made with masa, lard, and chicken broth instead of flour, shortening, and buttermilk. I had to use masa, shortening, and veggie broth for vegetarian guests
>Tamales are wrapped from the wide end of the husk to the narrow end, with the filling/dough at the wide end. One end is left open to allow the filling to expand, which it will as it is chemically leavened with baking powder.
>Tamales just need about 30 minutes in a pressure cooker
>Since I was feeding lactose-intolerant vegetarians and had one guest with an unknown spice tolerance, the filling was a simple strip of sheep milk manchego and a strip of poblano.

First soak your corn husks. You'll need, eh, about twenty. Depends on how big the husks are and how good you are at making these things. I suck at it, so I used quite a few. Stick the husks in boiling water and weigh them down so they sit in it for an hour or so.

Make up the masa. In a bowl mix 2 cups masa flour, 2 heaping tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt. Mix in .25 cup shortening into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Use your fingertips if you can. Slowly add 1 cup veggie broth, stirring, until mixture is sort of like mashed potatoes.

Lay out a corn husk. Put down 2 tablespoons of masa dough at the wide end of the husk, sort of to one side. Lay down the cheese strip and the poblano strip into the filling, then sort of roll the masa around the filling with the husk. Fold one of the long sides over the dough/filling, then roll it up the long way. Tie off the bundle with string. There is probably a much better howto video out there somewhere, accessible to folks with better internet.

Repeat this process until you run out of something. I ran out of masa dough first, which is fine, leftover manchego and poblano will certainly not go to waste.

Put down the steamer tray in the pressure cooker and fill the sucker up with tamales, open end facing up. Pour water down the side, avoiding the tamales, until the water level is right up to the bottom of the basket but not touching the tamales. Cover and steam on high pressure for 30 minutes or until the husk can be pulled away from the dough without a huge mess. These tamales are a little gooier than a meat tamale because of the cheese filling.

It's a testament to how forgiving this dish is that you can make it without having made it before, without even having a decent recipe, and still have it come out pretty damn good. As it is, I can't wait to do them again with pork filling and a proper recipe.

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