The Day I Made Tamales

When I first heard about Coco and Ben's Tamale Open Event, I knew I wanted to give tamale making a try. I'm always up for trying various foods and enjoy a good challenge. There's honestly no way I'd likely ever attempt making a number of dishes, I've made thus far, had it not been for the food blogging community. Which enhances my joy of cooking!

The first task on hand was to find the ingredients for making tamales. Kai in London, informed me of a Mexican Stall at Borough Market. (Thanks so much for your help Kai.) We headed into London by train to pick up our ingredients and of course, to enjoy a bit of London. If you live in the UK you can order Mexican ingredients online here or here.

Making tamales is meant to be a family event. Therefore, I turned it into one by making a long distance phone call to my sister back home in Brooklyn, NYC and asked her how she makes tamales. Of course her reply was, "I don't make tamales, I pick them up down the street for $1." At that point, I asked to speak to my lovely intelligent teenage niece, to do some quick research for me on the internet. She sent me to e-how. (Step by step for panicky cooks, such as myself, guide.)



There's a lot more to this story but I know we're all very busy so I'll try to make this short by providing you with the recipe that I'm not entirely sure worked.

The masa turned out fine - very very easy to make. The chicken after much confusion seemed to be alright for the dish. I think I may have gone wrong on the steaming time or the rolling of the tamales because the sauce of the chicken dried out and it looked flat, meaning the masa stuck to the corn husks. I gave it a total of 50 minutes after reading a recipe on epicurious but realized afterwards the timing was for banana leaves. Any idea if it takes more time to cook tamales in banana leaves? My guess is it should have just been given 30-35 minutes.

Tamales
(serves 6)
( a combination of E-How, You-Tube, Epicurious, instruction labels on a jar, and a nervous cook)
For the Chicken Filling
4 chicken thighs
water
about 5 peppercorns
an onion cut it half
piece of leek
garlic granules
salt

and
Mole Paste (next time I aim to try Coco's Mole)

Boil the chicken along with the other ingredients in water on a low-medium heat. Once the chicken is tender remove from heat. Allow to cool, remove the chicken thighs and shred. Combine a couple of T of Mole Paste with the chicken, along with some of the stock.

Reserve 1 1/2 cups of the stock to use for the Masa.

For the Masa
1 1/2 cups of Masa Harina
pinch of baking powder
1 1/2 cups of chicken broth
1/4 cup of vegetable oil,corn oil, or lard
pinch of salt

Combine all of the above ingredients until you have a consistent mixture.



Corn Husks
Prepare the corn husks by soaking them in boiling water for 15 minutes or until the husks are pliable.

Put it all together
Spread masa evenly over the corn husks. Place the shredded chicken in the center of the masa mixture.
Here's how to Fold Tamales. ( I didn't read this prior to preparing mine- I kind of treated them like Dolmades.)

Place the tamales in a steamer and cook for 35-40 minutes. Check every 20 minutes. From what I read, the tamales are cooked when it seperates easily from the corn husk.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this task! I have more husks to use up and even discovered an Oriental Food Shop Thai's R Us (haha!) in Canterbury that sell Banana Leaves. Can't wait for the round-up so I can attempt making them again and again and again.