[Quark recipe] How to Make Tamales in a Foreign Country

oshlo.blogspot.com - Many of you know I wrote a recipe book that incorporates travel stories and recipes from the Czech Republic called A Travel for Taste. You can still buy your copy from Amazon in either paperback or Kindle format (hint-hint). I'm currently working on a German version as well, and both volumes also feature my photography. So, you get that travel, photography and cooking are three of my favorite things.
I also hope you remember my travel journals last year about making pumpkin pie and the rest of Thanksgiving dinner in a foreign country. Well, this cooking in a foreign country is becoming even more of a thing in my life.
Through my teaching contract with the nearby U.S. Army post here in Germany, I met a wonderful couple originally from Mexico. You'll remember them from our outing to the Audi museum I told you about in a previous post. Carmela wants to go sightseeing and also wants to learn to cook, so the fact we've been spending a lot of time together should surprise no one.
I cooked a Valentine's dinner for them a couple of weeks ago, teaching Carmela how to make my famous blackout cake in the process. The next weekend, she offered to teach me how to make tamales using her mother's family recipe. I totally jumped at the chance!
Now, my knowledge of Mexican food extends only to Tex-Mex restaurants in the US and the Ro-tel dip I make with my bestie Cheryl. However, I did spend some time in New Mexico a few years ago and was fortunate enough to experience real Mexican cuisine. To say this project was an education is somewhat of a gross understatement.
Carmela had Skyped her mom and gotten the recipe.

She and her husband Ivan had also obtained all the necessary ingredients from the post commissary and a Mexican market they found in a little town nearby named Forchheim, of all places. I wrote about Forchheim's Medieval town center last year.

I mostly watched, wrote down instructions, and took pictures while the two of them cooked. Here's the basic process:

They had bought a beautiful chuck roast and cut it so it fit in a large pan. Carmela told me tamales traditionally use a pork roast, but her family uses beef most of the time.

She put the roast in the pan and covered it with water. She sliced half a large onion and added it to the water, along with some bay leaves. She brought it to a boil and simmered it til the meat was tender.

Meanwhile, Ivan gave me a chili pepper overview. For the tamales, he put some smooth-skinned dried chili peppers in a pan with some wrinkly dried peppers in the ratio of 2:1. He and Carmela referred to the smooth ones as California peppers, but the package said Colorado peppers. They explained that fresh ones are California and dried ones are Colorado. They just say California for either one. The wrinkly ones, I believe, were anchos. They told me the wrinkly ones keep the smooth ones from getting bitter.

He let me help him stem and seed the peppers.

Then he covered the peppers with boiling water and let them sit until they were reconstituted and soft.

Then he put them all in a blender with a rough-chopped half an onion and some garlic salt (you can also use fresh garlic cloves). He blended them up, adding salt to taste and some of the water in turns until the sauce was the consistency of thick tomato sauce. You can also use the stock from the meat instead of the water the peppers soaked in.

After the sauce (salsa) was done, Ivan mixed some Crisco (traditional is lard) with some Quaker Masa Harina de Maiz, which is a corn tortilla mix. My understanding is that corn is treated with lime to make this stuff. Here's Ivan modeling the Quaker mix (gotta love that smile!):

He added some water that the peppers soaked in (again, you can use the meat stock) and kneaded it until it formed a ball and pulled away from the sides of the bowl:

About that time Carmela decided Ivan was looking over her shoulder too much and they got into a heated debate about some finer point of the recipe. Just before she kicked him out of the kitchen, I made them pose for this "tense" photo:

Once allowed back into the kitchen, Ivan added some of the chili pepper sauce to the masa mix in a food processor until the consistency was about like that of toothpaste and had a beautiful orangey-red color:

On the other side of the kitchen, Carmela had finished shredding the cooked meat and put it in a skillet with some chopped onion and some of the chili sauce. She simmered it to marry the flavors.

As the gringa of the bunch, they let me slice some potato sticks that would go inside the tamales. Carmela said you can also do carrot sticks, too.

Dried corn husks were soaked in hot water in a flat pan and held down with a pot lid until they were soft and pliable:

Now that everything was ready, we set up an assembly line and began to create our tamales. First, we spread a couple of tablespoons of the masa mix on a corn husk:

By the way, if the masa mix is the right consistency, it will not stick to the corn husk. Another test is to drop a little ball of it into a cup of water. If it floats, your golden.

Then we spooned on some of the meat mixture and put an olive and a potato stick on top. Here is where you would put your carrot stick if you had them.

Now we folded the corn husk over the filling. Carmela said it's good if there is masa on the edge because it helps the tamale stay folded.

Finally, we folded the narrow end of the tamale over the rest of it to make a neat pocket:

Ivan, who had wandered out of the kitchen before we started assembling them, wandered back in after we'd done about five or six of them. He said something to Carmela in Spanish and she laughingly translated it as, "You're not selling them; put more stuff inside!"

Carmela and Ivan put a couple of inches of water in the bottom of a large pot and put a steamer rack over the water. Carmela stood the tamales on the folded end on the rack. We made enough tamales to fill the pot but not so many that they were packed tightly because they expand when they cook.

She covered them with foil and the pot lid. I also read you can cover them with extra corn husks. Then we let the water simmer to slowly steam the tamales. It took about 30 - 45 minutes to cook.

Here are our finished tamales. They expanded a little and the masa was now firm like polenta. Also, the potato sticks were tender and they smelled fantastic!

While the tamales were steaming, Carmela made the most delicious beans I've ever had - I can't even tell you! She had cooked some pintos, I think they were, from scratch - as in soaking and cooking all day. Then, while the tamales steamed, she put spoonfuls of beans in a pan with oil, added ham, crumbled bacon and browned chorizo sausage, along with some pickled jalepeno slices and some juice from the jalepenos. She mashed them best she could without a masher. At the end, she added three kinds of cheese. I still can't believe beans could taste so good!

If you've gotten the idea that tamales take a long time, you're right! We started about 5pm and didn't get to eat until about 11 that night. But it was totally worth it!

What a wonderful experience for this epicurious traveler! FYI, leftover tamales are even better the next day, fried up in a skillet with some eggs for breakfast. Wow! Carmela told me that making tamales is a holiday thing, where the whole family takes part in the assembly process and there are tamales for days. I understand why you would make so many at a time. Not only do they require a long preparation, but they are so good you want to have them around for while.
I noticed a recipe in Carmela's notebook for her mother's flan, so I'm going to ask her to show me that recipe as soon as we can get to it.
Stay tuned for our trip to Ehrenburg Palace in Coburg!
Photo for No Apparent Reason:

other source : http://solopos.com, http://komnatachista.blogspot.com, http://hipwee.com

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