Almost Instant Tamales for the Anal-Retentive Lazy Engineer

Tamales were a Christmas tradition in our family. Right along with the tree, the turkey, the ham, and the rosettes. And lots of um, discussions.

What wasn't a tradition was making them. My grandmother made her own enchilada sauce, beans, tortillas, fruit preserves, and grew a chunk of the food we ate, but I don't remember her ever making tamales(0). Every year someone would come around selling his grandmother's tamales. We'd get a good six dozen and be set. Later, when the tortilla/tamale shop opened up, we'd get a box of six dozen.

I remember not finding any decent tamales when I moved to Lubbock. It became my 'thing' to get a box of tamales at the store and pack it in my carry on bag on the trips back to school. I've since found Pedro's to be acceptable, but it was the first time I'd encountered open ended tamales.

So about fifteen years ago I started trying to make my own. This was before the "just look it up" stage of the internet, so I had to find books or packaging that would tell me how to do it. I've still got the recipes that were printed on the corn husk and masa bags in my serendipity book.

Just about everyone else who's blogged or written about making tamales tells you it's a Big Ordeal: it's so labor intensive and involved that you need a crowd of people helping you get it all done. And because it's such a big investment, you'd better damn well make several dozen so 1) there's enough for everyone, and 2) you don't have to do it again for a while. Hence the term "tamalada", which is essentially a tamale making party.

I agree with some of this. If you're going from pig to products in a weekend, then yeah, it's a Job. If you're looking for the taste without a whole lot of hassle, refill your drink and keep reading.

Tamalada for One

The filling The filling can be any damn thing you want. Growing up my parents used to buy "sweet tamales", which were filled with sugared rice and raisins. I couldn't stand them, but my younger siblings sucked them down. (Something they now deny). I was chatting with a coworker about making this year's batch and he mentioned his grandmother's "sweet tamales": pinto beans with brown sugar. I experimented with beans and maple syrup and I may have to kill the man. It's addictive.

Anyway, If you're going to make about a dozen tamales, you'll need about two cups of filling. These things are kind of like small pies or pastries - you'll use up a lot more dough than stuffing. If you find you've run out, find some leftovers and use that.

The dough So the basic recipe tends to be 2 cups masa(not cornmeal), 2 cups warm water or broth, some salt, some baking powder, and 1/2 to 2/3 cup lard. I've used shortening, I've used lard, I've used olive oil. The type of fat doesn't appear to me to affect the taste, but leaving it out altogether does. The cooked dough has a harder time coming away from the husk, and it's drier while eating. Also, fat in the shell blends better with any fat in the filling.

The wrap This is where it gets fun. You can order online, or find in any Mexican store, huge bags of corn husks. The cheaper packages have them all stuffed in willy nilly. More expensive brands have them unfolded and sorted, approximately the same size. Either way, you need to soak the things for a while. The minimum is about an hour(1). The hotter water the better.(2)

Sorting through the husks is time consuming, unless they've been presorted. Even then you're now on the clock - It's time to get that dough spread on the husk and the filling in and it all folded over.

Spoon method: This has you holding the husk in your hand, using the back of a spoon to try and evenly spread the dough over about a four or five inch square. The first few times you try it you will fail. It can be done but takes a lot of practice.

Spreader method: There is a tool that looks like a cement worker's smoother outer that you can get for about $8. This makes the job a little easier by giving your hand even pressure, but this still takes quite a bit of practice.

Press method: Plop a blob of dough on the husk. Fold it over, making a square. Get a spare husk and place it over any exposed dough. Smash with a tortilla press. Try not to smash too hard, as the husk will break and you've lost a husk.

I use what I call a Spreader-Press method: I do the prep I'd do for the press, and use the spreader to smash, and then cut and spread on open spots as needed.

This year I spotted something new - parchment tamale wraps. They look for all the world like corn husks, but completely uniform.

From Tamalada for One

Suddenly life got a lot easier. The wraps were 10 inches long, and wide enough to let me make a 5 inch square with the spreader press method.



This gave me a nice, uniform stack.

From Tamalada for One

So, having gone from hours of soak'n'sort time to "dip this thing for five seconds to get it wet", I decided to take the next logical step: using plain old parchment paper. Worked like a charm.

From Tamalada for One

By this time (about an hour and a half. The kids were home and I stopped a lot to take pictures) the leftover pork roast I'd been simmering in enchilada sauce was ready, by which I mean falling apart if you so much as looked at it funny.

Once more unto the dough!



Then to the pot!

From Tamalada for One

Steam for 90 minutes. I use a lot of water in my tamale pot because I don't like refilling it. This means I need to prop up the floor of the stack with a colander, but I'm not making five dozen at a time, so I don't care. You'll know the tamales are done when the wrapper peels away easily from the cooked dough. The dough should spring back at all points when you poke it with your finger. Any dents and it goes back in the pot.

Dinner!

What's that? Where's the almost instant part? Well, when you have uniform, stackable tamale wraps left over, you can 1) find something else to put in them, or 2) Freeze them!

I had to interrupt a tamalada years ago due to illness. Since the wraps were already made, I put them in the freezer. Then forgot about them. About six months later I ran across them and decided to try it out. They defrosted well, cooked up just fine, and the rest is history.

You still need to do the initial 90 minute steaming. You can break tradition all you want, but physics and chemistry don't care who you are.

For the full set of the tamalada pictures, click the pic.



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0. Dad says that when he was a kid, the tamales were part of a family task where the pig became tamales, chicharrones, ham hocks, chitlin's, bacon, and lard in a weekend.

1. I had good results one year using food dye in the husk's soaking water to color code the tamales by filling. With the colors we could tell right away what was inside.

2. Fortunately they can be stored in the refrigerator in the soaked state for about a week. After that they fall apart.


BONUS!Now this lady has it together!



DOUBLE BONUS! I am not worthy:

"You want to put WHAT on WHAT?!"

That's the response you're going to get when you propose this for breakfast:

pancakes with fresh feta cheese and honey.

That's what I said, that's what my sister said, that's what everybody else I know said.

But. It tastes great. Granted, you need to actually like feta cheese for this to work. But hey, you don't like it, that's more for me.

Well, I'm lazy. I don't always get the feta, but pancakes are cheap and easy to make. I assuage my mom-nutrition guilt by adding milk powder and an extra egg to the mix so the kids get some protein. (Though when I ran out of eggs and substituted applesauce and brewer's yeast, breakfast was a hit!)

Anyway, I needed to add protein for myself, so I dug out the cream cheese and started making sandwiches out of them. Yum.

But it was lacking the sweet. Enter cream cheese on one side, spreadable honey on the other. Very, very good, and not drippy at all.

easy barbecue sauce

one can enchilada sauce

about half a can of ketchup.

What's going on here?

Shoot, just look at the ingredients.  Then find those obsessive posts about the perfect barbecue sauce. Except for the whiskey and coffee, which should be going into you anyway, there's not a hair's difference.

It's in the bag

I still do cakes by the cup, mainly because it all gets eaten in one day, so no leftovers to deal with.

Experiments with dried eggs and lethicin granules were a success! I used the Deb-el powdered eggs and granular soy lethicin from my local health nut store.

The original "Cake in a mug" recipe calls for a box of cake mix and a box of pudding to be combined, then split up in approximately one-cup portions. You then add one egg, one tablespoon of water, then one tablespoon of oil for one little cake.

This makes about five cakes total. This means you add the equivalent of five eggs and five tablespoons lethicin to the original cake mix and pudding recipe.

Now your "instant cake" recipe is one cup mix, and two tablespoons water. It comes out pretty thick, so I don't think there's harm in adding a little bit more water if you want to pour easily.

Speaking of pouring: There's really no need to muss up too many dishes making four cupcakes or a single serving cake. Just get a quart sized zipper bag and put the water and mix inside. Smoosh as necessary to mix thouroughly. Cut off a corner to pour the mix into the cupcake papers or little bitty cake pan, or even the coffee mug.

Roast leftovers, part 1

Saturday's dinner was cut up meat and onions in a bowl with some of the juice, soaked up by whole wheat bread. Sunday was meat shavings and Monterrey Jack cheese wrapped in a tortilla.

Monday I got a little ambitious. In my 8" cast iron frypan, I carmelized an onion. Then I put some of the leftover liquid in the pot, along with a spoonful of the rendered fat. (that was a mistake, I think). I dumped the mess into the saucepan.

I read that when you carmelize an onion, you should use a bit of vinegar at the end to deglaze. I say, why use vinegar when you have scotch? About two tablespoons swished around and was dumped into the saucepan.

I cut a potato in thin slices and dumped that in, filling the frypan with water and dumping the water in the saucepan. Simmered until the potatoes were cooked.

I tasted it and it was pretty bland and fatty tasting - next time no fat. I put in generous amounts of celery salt and black pepper, then let it boil some more.

(This is one of those times that roasted long green chiles would have come to the rescue. Alas, they had gone bad)

Tasting again, it wasn't so bad. I spooned some into a bowl with sharp cheddar cheese on top. That turned out to be the key.

What's going on here

I'm thinking the sharp cheddar mitigated the sweetness of the onions, and the fats blended well together.

Lessons Learned
No rendered fat on sweated, carmelized onions, and cut the onions into bits instead of rings for soup.

One for the cook, one for the cooked

Mom is a master roastmaker. She can make a lump of meat tender and then make it last for a good week. I'm no good at roasts in the oven, but I can do them on the stovetop.

Today I had a beef arm roast and two bottles of beer, a Scottish Ale and Newcastle Ale. Friends told me the "Newkie" would be the best, so it went into the pot and the Scottish Ale went into me.

The roast was frozen when it went into the pan. I'd put some olive oil in the bottom of the big cast iron frypan, along with celery salt, garlic powder, and black pepper.

I seared the top and bottom of the meat and turned down the heat. I cut up half an onion and laid some of the slices on top, and others in the oil.

After about 30 minutes I put in the beer and added the rest of the onion.

What's going on here (shakes fist at baby brother)

(I'm going to cheat and copy from here)

Beer is by nature bitter. It comes from the hops. Malt adds a sweet flavor that counteracts and harmonizes with the bitterness. Likewise, sweet foods profit from the marriage with the hops' bitter taste. Use sugary vegetables like onions, carrots, corn, etc., and even add some honey, molasses or sugar itself. Caramelized onions are a classic example of a sweet vegetable ideal with beer.

***
The result was a very mellow tasting meat and liquid combination. I shaved off some slices off the roast and left them in the liquid. I deglazed the pan with the rest of the Scottish Ale and am letting it all "brew" in the refrigerator. I'm going to get some Russett potatoes during the week and make a potato soup. I'm undecided on whether to add mushrooms.

Béchamel Mucho

Serves 2, 5 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking

More mushrooms! This is a béchamel (BEH-sham-el) sauce good for sea creatures, pastas, poultry or the ocassional bloody steak. Cream sauces take some effort and care but are easy to cook alongside the main dish.

* 1 cup diced fresh brown mushrooms: portabellos, etc
* 1g dried porcini, crushed
* 2tbsp butter
* 12oz whole milk
* 4oz vegetable stock or 1/2tsp soy sauce or 1/2 to 1 cube vegetable boullion
* 1/2 tsp white flour or corn starch
* 1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Warm the milk to about 40C/100F and dissolve the flour and stock/soy/boullion in it. Set aside.

In a medium pot sautee the mushrooms with butter over medium-low heat until they are shrunk to half size and most of the water is gone, about 15 minutes. Add the milk mixture and pepper and raise heat to medium-high, stirring pretty much constantly until it's nice and creamy. Don't let it sit too long.

What's going on here

Bechamel is a "mother sauce" that serves as a base for many many many recipes. The basic ingredients are milk, butter, and flour. Everyone has their own version and origin myths. The only thing they agree on is the need to rinse the pot immediately afterward.

Sauteeing mushrooms slowly releases their flavor better. If you have the time it really brings out their best. You want a nice brown beefy type of mushroom, not a fru fru oyster or those little white ones. The flour/starch should be completely dissolved in the milk so that it acts as a thickener without clumping. Constant stirring when it's in the pot aids evaporation and keeps the milk from boiling and separating. If you can scald milk and clarify butter properly, god bless you. The way I described is easier for us mortals.

You can optionally add a dollop of table cream or heavy cream, or even shredded cheese. The stock/soy/boullion give it salt and extra flavor. For seafood I like to add some shredded ginger on top.