Tamales

A few months ago I purchased a bag of Masa Harena --- not sure why though. This past week when Allison visited me I found a reason. Her first suggestion for what to cook with me was tamales. At first I was confused as to why she wanted to make a small red candy you buy in a box. However, after a little internet searching I remembered that they are, in fact, more than just candy.

We started to cook yesterday at about 5pm. The first step was to create a suitable vegetarian version of the Masa dough. Traditionally this is made with lard, but the local lard salesman was out of vegetable lard, so we needed to resort to a substitution of oil and a little butter. The recipes we looked at online suggested that it is best to use some chicken stock, but we wanted to use cheese in the filling (and my pots and pans are mostly dairy...) so we began looking for a suitable substitute. In the spirit of laziness, We didn't feel like going to the store to get vegetable stock, so after some poking around the cabinets we found a box of matzoh ball soup mix.

For the dough I used:
5 cups of Masa Harina
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 Tbsp salt
A few dashes of paprika, garlic powder and black pepper
1/2 a package of dried (vegetarian) chicken soup mix
4 cups or so of water
a little under 1 cup or so of oil (I used olive, but any kind probably does)



Mix together the dried goods. Slowly add in the water, making sure to mix with all of the masa. When all of the water is added, add in the oil and work with a fork until everything is mixed. The dough (perhaps not the best name for it, since its nothing like bread dough) should be a little grainy and fluffy and certainly not soupy.

After making the dough we needed to purchase some corn husks. I suppose that you can just save corn husks from summer corn purchases... but I didn't have any so we went to a local mexican food store and got few packages. To soften the husks we boiled some water and poured it over them and let them sit and soak for a few minutes.



Meanwhile we prepared a bean filling by sauteing a head of garlic and a large onion and then adding in a can of beans. It turns out that we probably should have doubled this part of the recipe since we ran out of the beans after making about half of the tamales.



Besides beans, we purchased three types of cheese (Queso Fresco, Mozzarella and cheddar) and some Jalapenos and green peppers for filling. We sliced the peppers into thin strips and tried not to get too many seeds from the Jalapenos into the tamales.





To assemble a tamale, place the corn husk on a flat surface with the pointy part facing away from you. Take the dough and place a small handful on the left closest section of the husk. With you fingers spread out the dough until its pretty thin and covers all but the right one-third and furthest one-third (near the pointy part) of the husk.




Now place some cheese and some pepper and some beans on the left-middle part of the dough. Taking the left side of the husk in your hand roll tightly over the filling and bring the left edge of the husk down to meet the end of right end of the dough.



This part reminds me a lot of rolling sushi... Then fold the pointy part in (towards you) and finish rolling the tamale towards the right. Finally take the tamale in hand and pinch off the top, open section (adding a little more dough if needed) so that you get a nice point of dough.



We used a vegetable steamer insert and a large pan to steam the tamales. I suppose anything which creates hot steam would do the job. The tamales really need to cook for a while, though they can be piled up a fair amount. As always, when steaming make sure not to run out of water, or else you will loss your pan. The key here is to let the cook for a while... at least 40 minutes or so.



The dough shouldn't be wet at all when the tamales are done. You should be able to slice the tamale (after unwrapping it) with a fork and it should keep its shape.




Our tamales came out really well. I think the recipe yielded about 30 or so, so we ended up freezing a good portion. If you freeze them I've read that you are not supposed to defrost them. Rather just steam them from frozen, or you can probably microwave them until hot.

I won't get fooled again

George W Bush once said: Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again. We'll I've been fooled two times about beans at a Mexican restaurant (and maybe more times unwittingly). When I was visiting in San Antonio I ate at a nice Tex-Mex restaurant and midway through eating the beans I noticed a small piece of something which didn't look quiet like onion and didn't have the right consistency to be carrot. It was pale and thinly slices without much flavor. It took me a little to realize (or perhaps I quickly realized and it took me a while to admit) that the piece was some sort of animal flavoring with which the beans had been cooked. Needless to say I stopped eating those beans and felt kind of bad about myself. After all, I purport to eat kosher, or at least vegetarian when out and this was in clear opposition of that claim.

This past week I was fooled again. I was spending the week in Salt Lake City Utah for dual purposes of skiing and attending a math conference at the University of Utah. One of the evening of the conference a bunch of us got together and hunted for a famous Mexican joint called Red Iguana. After wandering we eventually found the place, and despite the scores of people waiting outside, eventually got in and ordered. I picked chili rellenos. Like most Mexican restaurants, they were served with ample rice and beans. The beans, however, had a taste which after two spoonfuls was very easy to place. Chicken stock or chicken fat permeated the otherwise wonderful beans. WHY???? I had even ordered the dish on the vegetarian section of the menu.

What I have come to realize is that it is often easy to find a main dish which is purely vegetarian, however the trickier points are when the restaurant gives you side dishes (often without telling you exactly what they will be). This happened to me a few weeks back when I went out with my brother to a sushi place and got a salmon bento box. Little did I know that the box would be accompanied by chicken wings and some sort of shrimp dumpling. Most people would take this as a gift, but for me it was just a waist (they ended up going to my brother's dog).

Unfortunately I can not expect to be able to eat out completely vegetarianly without ever encountering meat or meat flavoring. Risotto, rice, beans, salads, soups all will occasionally come with some sort of meat or meat flavorings. Even if I am super paranoid, I may not always catch this. I can not have things both ways --- I can not expect to be wholly kosher while still eating out.

In any case, I decided today, that because I did not get to eat those beans in Utah, I would make some black beans of my own. So last night I set soaking a pound of little black beans. By morning they had roughly tripled in size and absorbed the whole thing of water. These beans take much longer to cook than larger beans and even after about 2.5 hours of cooking, there are a few that are still a little tough. The aim of this dish was to have a thick mixture of black beans in a sauce mostly composed of black bean's which had burst open. I made a few untraditional choices in flavor which give this dish a kind of tart and also slightly sweet taste.





Recipe:
1 lb dried black beans (soaked over night in lots of water)
3 bay leaves
3 dried red peppers
1 jar salsa
1 carrot
1 large sweet potato
1 large head of garlic
2 onions
cumin powder
paprika
mustard powder
salt / pepper
beer / vinegar / apple cider / wine

Dice the garlic and onions and cook with some canola oil with three bay leaves and dried red peppers. After about 5 minutes add in the carrot and sweet potato and cook for a few minutes. Add in the beans, their water and a jar of salsa. Cook until some of the water has cooked off then add in cumin, paprika, mustard powder, salt, pepper and any other powdered spices you desire. Also, start to add in some beer or vinegar or cider or wine to replenish the liquid. I used all four and it made the sauce very interesting. Make sure that there is always ample liquid. It will take about 2 hours for the sauce to get nice and thick. The target is to have a thick bean sauce with a number of well cooked black beans floating around in it. Be careful - the bottom of the pan may burn if you do not stir it every once in a while.