Cinco de mayo: a tale of tamales and chiles poblanos

I stole this presentation from Rick Bayless. If it's good enough for #Obama, it's good enough for mi familia.

Last week was cinco de mayo. I meant to post this earlier, but I got a bit distracted by the election. And I'm not exactly swimming in free time either. But better late than never.

The first thing you need to know about cinco de mayo is it's NOT Mexican Independence Day. That's the 16th of September.

Cinco de mayo is the anniversary of the battle of Puebla, when Napoleon III of France tried to take over Mexico shortly after Benito Juarez took office as president.

The French lost.

The second thing you need to know is it's not a national holiday in Mexico. It is a regional holiday in Puebla.

When cinco de mayo is celebrated outside Mexico, any Mexican cuisine is appropriate, but I wanted to give a nod to good old Puebla, so although I made quite "generic" tamales, I used poblano chiles from the Cool Chile Company.

But because Puebla is Oaxaca's rival for culinary capital of Mexico, I've balanced it by using queso de Oaxaca from Gringa Dairy.

I've written about sweet tamales and "tamale pie", but I haven't written about savoury tamales, which is a glaring omission, as they are a classic of Mexican cuisine. In fact, they are older than the mighty tortilla.

A quick lesson in corn (apologies for the squeamish): if you've ever changed a nappy after chili con carne day at your child's nursery, you'll know that kernels of corn are practically indigestible. They go right through.

This is because they have a tough outer hull which resists digestion, meaning you can't absorb most of its nutrients. It also gets stuck in your teeth.

What the Meso-Americans found out, several thousand years ago, is that if you soak corn kernels in slaked lime (the same caustic substance used for rendering the stucco that covered their pyramids), the outer hull would loosen and could then be rinsed off.

Then the soft, inner flesh of the corn kernels could then be ground into a nutritious dough. This process is called nixtamalizacion (nixtamilization), from Nauhatl nextli "ashes" (referring to the slaked lime) and tamalli "dough".

So tamales, which are basically corn dumplings, would have been one of the first things they made with their discovery. Tortillas probably came later.

So, the thing about tamales is, they take a hell of a long time to make. In fact, you have to start the night before.

There's actually no one right recipe for tamales, and there are countless regional variation as well. And as they're quite fiddly, people tend to stick with the recipe that works for them.

The one I use comes from Two Cooks and a Suitcase. 

To make these tamales you need:

• 200g masa harina
• 100g melted butter or lard
• 250 ml chicken stock
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• salt

You will also need a lot of corn husks.

A note on the lard: in this age of health-consciousness we are all a bit frightened of lard, and rightly so. And I certainly wouldn't suggest you get one of those cloudy-white blocks of lard they sell in supermarkets.

On the other hand, pork lard (manteca de cerdo) is a big part of traditional Mexican cooking. To get manteca I usually skim off and sieve any rendered fat from pork dishes, especially bacon, though it takes a long time to collect a decent amount.

Or Gringa Dairy has provided this recipe for homemade manteca.

If you're still not comfortable using lard or butter, you can try olive oil, though I never have.

First you have to soak your corn husks in water overnight. The recipe will probably make 12 tamales, but you'll need to many more corn husks because some will be ripped or too small or otherwise unsuitable, and you'll need extras to cut into strips so you can tie the tamales.

The day you intend to serve, you have to make the tamal dough.

Sift the masa harina and baking powder into a bowl.

Add the melted butter.

Then gradually stir in the stock until the liquid is fully incorporated. It will be kind of pasty and spreadable.

Then you need to assemble the tamales.

Spread out a good sized and undamaged corn husk.

Spread a heaped dessert spoon of the tamal dough over the widest part of the husk, leaving about a centimetre of space at the top and sides. 

Shit. I forgot to leave space at the side. 

Now put a dessert spoon of filling into the middle. Fold the tamal from left to right and then fold the bottom up to create a little parcel. 

Tie the parcel up with kitchen string or with strips of smaller corn husks (the traditional way). 

As you can see above, I've folded the top down too. That's optional, and a lot of people leave the top open. I do it myself about half the time. 

When you've assembled the tamales, stand them upright in a steamer and steam on high for a good hour. 

In Mexico they have special tamal steamers (with extra-tall steaming chambers). You can get them by mail order from MexGrocer.com, but I just use a standard steamer (even though my tamales stick out the top. 

However, you cannot make tamales without a steamer, so if you don't have one, make tamale pie. 

So what fillings did I use. 

Well, I had some leftover carnitas, so I filled four of my twelve with that, omitting the spicy red chile sauce you would normally have so my kids could eat them. (My 5yo daughter loved them but my 2yo son just ate the corn dumpling and left the carnitas.)

I haven't written about carnitas yet, but I donated this recipe to Gringa Dairy. It works every time. 

Carnitas, or Mexican pulled pork.

I also poached and shredded some chicken breasts and fried it up with rajas con crema (strips of chile poblano fried with sour cream) and salsa verde. I used this for four more tamales. 

These are rajas, ready to be fried.

The last four I stuffed with rajas and queso de Oaxaca, inspired by Tamal.co.uk. 

I actually had one left over, so the last tamal had no filling. This is called a tamal sordo (literally a "deaf tamal"). 

I served the tamales on a bed of frijoles de olla (stewed black beans) and topped them with a string or two of queso de Oaxaca and some more salsa verde.

Here's the money shot again, just because I like it: 

Tamale Pie (no, really)

I still remember when I first got Two Cooks and a Suitcase, the Lupe Pintos cookbook that effectively launched my journey into authentic Mexican food.

Near the beginning Doug Bell and Rhoda Robertson wrote "if you make only one recipe from this book, make tamales or tamale pie". I made both on the same night.

Now, "tamale pie" isn't something I remember eating as a kid. In California we mostly have norteña style tamales with a savoury filling, wrapped in a corn husk and steamed.

But the amazing thing about tamales is that they have about a million variations throughout Mexico.

One of those variations is a kind of tamale pie called Muk-Bil Pollo, typical of the Yucatán.

(The Yucatán is one of the regions where Doug Bell and Rhoda Robertson lived in Mexico; Two Cooks and a Suitcase is teeming with Yucatecan recipes.)

So this year, for día de los muertos, I decided to make a tamale pie as a kind of simplified version of Muk-Bil Pollo.

With limited success.

The main issue with anything tamal-related is time, because you but only have to mix up some tamal dough, but also make a filling, and then the dish will need 45 minutes to an hour's cooking time.

For the pie version, you can dispense with the faff of rolling the tamales into corn husks, but this doesn't save as much time as I'd hoped.

The other issue I had in particular was the filling itself. I read a traditional recipe for Muk-Bil Pollo and found it was another of these achiote-marinated fillings, which I've been eating a lot of recently.

I simplified the dish by omitting the pork (Muk-Bil Pollo is traditionally a combination of chicken and pork) and the banana leaves (again, traditionally you would wrap the pie in a banana leaf before baking it).

Even so, I was cooking for several hours.

The finished dish was good. But it wasn't really great. It was certainly not the best thing I've ever put into a tamal.

However, the kids loved it (I made them a chile-free version); my four-year-old ate about twice as much of it as she usually does of things I cook.

I just kind of ended up wishing it was filled with pollo en salsa verde.

Definitely not pollo en salsa verde

If you want too make this, you'll need to make the filling first.

I poached some chicken breasts with a quartered white onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 10 black peppercorns, and a teaspoon of Mexican oregano.

Then I shredded the chicken and reserved the stock for the tamal dough.

I roasted some red, yellow and green bell peppers on a hot dry frying pan until they blackened a bit, then cut them into strips (rajas).

I made a sauce by reconstituting two chiles guajillos and blending them with one recipe of recado rojo, adding enough of the chiles' soaking water to make it a loose, pourable sauce.

Then I diced half a red onion and sweated it for a few minutes in a frying pan over medium high.

Then I added the rajas and fried them a few minutes more.

Then I added the shredded chicken and fried it until the chicken took on some texture.

Then I added the sauce and continued cooking until everything was heated through.

For the tamal dough, I sifted 300 g of masa harina with 1/3 tsp of baking powder.

Then I poured in 150 g of melted butter (you can also use pork lard) and mixed it gently until it was fully incorporated.

Then I gradually poured in 250 mL of chicken stock, mixing all the time, until I had a soft dough.

Then I greased a casserole dish, lined the bottom and sides with dough about 5 cm thick.

Then I added the filling and covered it with the remaining dough. This is hard, because if you pat the dough down too hard the filling will squidge out.

Cover the dish and bake at 180° C for 45 minutes.

I sold this to my kids as "Mexican cornbread", and it does have a "breadier" texture than steamed tamales, verging on being too dry. It's possible I overbaked it slightly, or perhaps if I'd used the banana leaves I could have preserved some of the moisture.

In any case, I have to admit I still prefer steamed tamales, especially considering that tamale pie isn't much less work.

If you're going to spend three straight hours in the kitchen you might as well have classic tamales.

I served the tamale pie with some salsa verde I got from La Costeña, which was very good and the perfect complement to the richness of the filling.

On the side I whipped up a "winter salad" of watercress, avocado, sliced radish, satsumas, and pomegranates, with a dressing of lime juice, extra virgin olive oil, and minced shallot. Delicious!

This was the highlight of the meal.

Next year I think I'll opt for pumpkin and chorizo tamales. Can't go wrong with that!

By the way: if you wanna have a go at this but don't wanna use the same filling, try poaching the chicken and prepping the rajas as above, but fry them in salsa verde (store-bought or homemade) instead of the achiote sauce. You can even loosen it up with a bit of crema or sour cream. Simple but delicious.

And on a final geeky note, in Spanish, the singular of tamales is tamal, but in English tamale is an acceptable singular. 

Tamal.co.uk: This is what tamales are meant to taste like

Note the expert wrapping.

If there are two universal truths about tamales, they are:

1) tamales are delicious

2) tamales take forever to make

(The third truth is that the singular of tamales is tamal.)

In Mexico, when tamales are on the menu, the whole family comes together to make an assembly-line and share the workload.

But what do you do in Britain, when you really want tamales but don't have the time to make them yourself (or an army of expert helpers)?

Order them from Tamal.co.uk!

Unlike some companies who import ready-made tamales from Mexico (which is a lot of food miles for a finished dish), Tamal.co.uk make their tamales freshly to order, right here in Britain.

I was very keen to try them because I'm a firm believer in tamales as one of the great dishes of Mexican cuisine.

They have topped my list of favourite foods since I was a kid, and as they're still relatively unknown in fajita-ruled Britannia, I believe they can turn a lot of people around about Mexican food.

However, they are not easy to make, and they demand specialist ingredients like masa harina and corn husks (to say nothing of the fillings).

So Tamal.co.uk is important to me in my quest to get everyone eating tamales. Because, honestly, we can't all make our own.

For our test-drive, we ordered a selection of savoury tamales:

Pork in red chile sauce (for me, the classic filling)

Chicken in salsa verde (another favourite)

Chicken in mole poblano (a decadent choice!)

Rajas con queso (green chile strips and cheese)

And for dessert we got two strawberry tamales. Because sweet tamales are awesome!

The tamales can be steamed from frozen but I defrosted mine in the fridge overnight.

(There are also microwaving instructions if you don't have a steamer.)

The tamales themselves were expertly wrapped in their corn husks and absolutely perfect in texture and flavour.

The fillings were uniformly delicious. Of particular note for me were the pork in red chile sauce, which really brought back memories, and the chicken in mole (as soon as they started cooking, my kitchen was filled with the lovely, complex aroma of mole).

The runaway star, though, was the tamal de rajas con queso.

I love rajas anyway, but the cheese was amazing (either real queso de Oaxaca or a very close substitute, and there was a delicious (and quite spicy) tomato and chile sauce.

Then we tried the strawberry tamales.

Oh.

My.

God.

Anyone who doesn't try these is doing themselves a major disservice.

I've written about making tamales a couple times before, but for anyone who finds the workload a bit daunting or who just isn't sure what tamales are meant to taste like (not having grown up eating them), Tamal.co.uk. is the option for you.

This is exactly what tamales are meant to taste like.

Tamales all look alike, so they arrive with handy labels.

Sweet Tamales and Champurrado

Tamales are probably my favourite ever Mexican dish.

Like chiles rellenos, they take forever to make. But they are totally worth it.

Tamales (the singular is tamal) are dumplings made of corn dough (masa) and steamed in a corn husk or a banana leaf.

They are usually filled with something delicious and, especially in restaurants in the United States, can be accompanied by a sauce.

The filling can be savoury or sweet, and they can also have no filling at all. These are called tamales sordos, which means "deaf tamales".

Deaf tamales are the classic accompaniment to mole.

In Mexico you can buy tamal dough (masa para tamales), which is like tortilla dough but more coarsely ground. Here in the UK you have to improvise using masa harina.

I first made tamales from the recipe in Two Cooks and a Suitcase, and this is still the recipe I trust most.

Before this post, I had made tamales twice and "tamale pie" twice, going savoury each time, but I really wanted to give sweet tamales a try for two reasons:

• I could have tamales for breakfast

• I could eat them with champurrado (more on that below)

Tamales are at least a two-day affair.

The day before you plan to eat them, put all you corn husks in cold water to soak. Weigh them down with a plate so each one is completely submerged.

You can buy corn husks, masa harina, and everything else you need for tamales at Lupe Pinto's or from the Cool Chile Company, by the way.

Then you need to decide on a filling and make it. For the sweet tamales I just used dried cranberries, so I got to skip this step.

On the day you plan to serve, you need to mix up your tamal dough. This is a combination of masa harina, melted fat, liquid, and a half teaspoon of baking powder to keep the tamales light.

For savoury tamales, you might use melted lard (or butter), and the liquid would be a stock of since kind.

Two Cooks and a Suitcase only gives a recipe for savoury tamal dough, so I had to improvise a sweet version.

I used melted butter for the fat and dissolved a cone of real Mexican piloncillo in some warm water in place of stock.  

Sweet tamal dough

Ingredientes

• 200 g masa harina
• 100 g melted butter
• 250 ml water
• 1 small cone of piloncillo (about one ounce)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preparación 

Put the water into a pan over a very low heat and add the piloncillo. You might want to bash it up in a mortar first so it dissolves more quickly.

Or you could substitute a little less than an ounce of demerara sugar, brown sugar, or caster sugar mixed with molasses.

Also, they sell cones of unrefined sugar in many Jamaican/Caribbean food shops. This is very similar to piloncillo.

Sift the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Add the melted butter and water (once the piloncillo has dissolved) and mix into a batter. Two Cooks likens this to cake batter, but I find it's much stiffer and less pourable than that.

This is stuff you can scoop up with a spoon and spread with a knife.

Which is basically what you have to do next.

Spread a corn husk on a plate, wide side facing away from you.

Take a tablespoon or so of the dough and spread it over the husk in a square-ish shape like this:

Put a spoonful of you filling on the dough (how much filling depends on how big your tamales are).

Fold them up so that the filing is completely enclosed by the dough and the dough is completely enclosed by the husk.

You will find some husks have holes or rips or are otherwise unusable. Tear these ones into thin strips. They tear easily along the grain.

Use these strips to tie up the tamales into little parcels.

Traditionally you leave the wide end of the husks open, but I usually tie them at both ends if I can. Don't ask me why. It's just the way my mother taught me. Presumably she learned it from her grandmother.

Once all your tamales are wrapped, place them in a steamer, wide side facing up (especially if it's open at that side).

Put the lid on the steamer (not pictured).

These need to steam for an hour, 45 minutes of which has to be on full steam. So while you're waiting, make some champurrado.

Champurrado is atole flavoured with chocolate.

Atole is a traditional Mexican hot drink thickened with masa. It is the classic drink to have with tamales.

I stole this champurrado recipe from Rick Bayless so the measurements are in American.  

Champurrado 

Ingredientes

• 1/2 cup masa 
• 2 cups milk 
• 3 ounces Mexican chocolate 
• 2 ounces piloncillo 
• Some aniseed (I used a star anise) 

Preparación

If you live in Britain, you have to make your own masa.

Mix 1/2 cup masa harina with 1/4 cup hand-hot water and you're done. No resting or kneading like when you make tortillas.

Put the milk in a pan and add the masa. Stir it up. Little darlin'. Stir it up.

Next add the piloncillo. About two small cones will do, but weigh them first to make sure.

You'll also need to chop or grind them up so they dissolve better.

Two cones of piloncillo waiting to get bashed to fuck.

Then add the chocolate. I used half a block of Willy's Cacao, ground up with 20 g of toasted almonds and a 5 mm cinnamon stick.

Pop in your aniseed, if you're using it, and bring the whole thing to a simmer, whisking whisking frequently.

When the chocolate and piloncillo have dissolved and the champurrado is nice and thick, it's done. It will look like this:

By the way, the longer you cook it, the thicker it gets. Eventually you will be eating chocolate porridge.

Now your tamales should be done. Remove them to a serving plate so people can help themselves.

A pile of sweet tamales.

Ladle some champurrado into mugs and serve.

The champurrado was so thick we often dipped our tamales into it, sort of like chcolate con churros.

But the tamales were so fecking delicious they didn't really need any accompaniment. The cranberries had gone all plump and moist, and the sweetened tamal dough was delicious even before it was cooked.

An unwrapped tamal. Don't eat the corn husk, whatever you do.

I had been nervous about the tamales, because a friend of mine had recently made them and reported that they fell apart, even though she used the same recipe.

I did some research and found this is one of the ways tamales often go wrong. Another is that the dough is too dense and stodgy.

My friend is an excellent cook, better than me, in fact. So now I was really worried.

But once again, my tamales were perfect. Having now made tamales or a variation of them five times, I can report that they have never gone wrong for me.

I have no idea why. It ain't pure talent, I can tell you. And it ain't because tamales are easy to make (they aren't). It must be luck. Or maybe the spirit of my great grandmother Eva guiding me or something.

If you have a half-Mexican great grandmother, you should really try this; in fact, even if you don't you should. Tamales are one of the culinary wonders of the world.

Hell, if you're afraid of all the work. I'll come over and make them for you. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to make more tamales.

As for the champurrado, it was absolutely delicious. The only thing is, it tasted a helluva lot like Mexican hot chocolate, which is much easier to make.

Therefore I doubt I will make champurrado again. In the very near future I will make a more basic atole to see if I like it (starting with a variation probably wasn't the best introduction to this drink, but I found the concept of masa-thickened hot chocolate impossible to resist).

Once again, you can get everything you need to make tamales from Lupe Pinto's or the Cool Chile Company (if you don't live in Edinburgh or Glasgow).

Also, the restaurant Mestizo in London has tamales on the menu, and as Mestizo is easily the best Mexican restaurant in the UK, I'm sure they are delicious. Have some chiles rellenos for a starter.

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and Christmas break

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint.

Mexico actually has one of the most appropriate patron saints of any nation.

The story goes that, not long after Spain took control of what is now Mexico, a priest was walking from his village to Mexico City.

A young girl appeared on a hill and asked him in Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs) to build a church on that spot.

According to the Catholic Church, this young Nauhatl-speaking girl was an apparition of the Virgin Mary, and is now known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.

There is still a church on that site, by the way, but it's quite old now, so they built a new one on the other side of the square.

Anyway, I thought this would be a good time to announce MexiGeek's Christmas plans.

I'll be winding down on posts until after New Year, but I plan to complete some of the redesigns I've been meaning to do for a while, including my reviews of US cookbooks and a list of Mexican food resources.

Because they were so poplar last year I will be reposting links to my series on mole poblano over the Christmas holiday, just so you don't forget about me.

For this year's Christmas cooking project, however, I will be making sweet tamales and champurrado.

Sweet tamales, of course, are just tamales that are sweet. But the champurrado will be a completely new experience for me.

Champurrado is a kind of atole, and atole is a Mexican hot drink thickened with masa (corn tortilla dough). Champurrado is a chocolate-flavoured atole.

Atoles of all varieties are the traditional accompaniment to tamales, and tamales are celebration food, very popular at Christmas.

I plan on having this for breakfast one morning between Christmas and New Year, so I won't post it until 2013, but if you're looking for a Mexican Christmas recipe (and you have a lot of time on your hands), have a go at turkey in mole sauce.

¡Feliz navidad y próspero año nuevo!