Tamales, is steam-cooked corn dough (masa) wrapped in corn husk. It can be savory with meat or cheese filling or sweet with dried fruits. My first taste of tamales were commercial ones that our Church sold for fund raising... Boy they tasted like cardboard! However, a Mexican classmate in culinary school redeemed this dish for me when he made it fresh in class. It is truly amazing how different a freshly steamed version of this tasted with the cornmeal and meat almost melting in my mouth like butter.
The recipe that I made called for slow-cooking the meat in a concoction of several kinds of dried chili... ancho, arbol, mullato and pasilla. The Chili Colorado sauce is a derivative of the same sauce added to the meat. The challenge for me was the first step which is toasting the dried chiles. I have never used or seen them until I moved to Texas and I am overwhelmed by the complexity of how a pepper can taste in fresh and dried form. The rest of the process can be divided into stages, cooking the pork, making the dough and making the sauce.
My blog today is dedicated to my friend who I took Tamales cooking lessons with and I missed during the summer. I share with you this dish and the lesson it brings... Life is like a good meal which involves a "wrap", the process for making it is long and laborious but worth every step when you take your bite later. It is hot, hot, hot here in Texas but good food and good friends always redeem the soul during the worst weather and it could taste like Christmas even during the heat of summer. Welcome back to our dear friend, we just wish Texas will be as cool as San Francisco but there is hope and always something to look forward to... summer will be over soon and we will celebrate the change of the season.
No comments:
Post a Comment