Back to the future! We have here the king of mesoamerican food. It is one of the oldest recipes, part of the traditions of mesoamerican populations including Aztecs and Mayas. The Tamales have a long history and traces of their consumption date back to 7.000 AC. They are made with masa a white corn base flour, filled with a savory filling: meat, vegetables, fruits, cheese. The Tamale is portable food steamed or boiled and preserved into a leaf wrapper (usually plantain leaves), you can eat them as a sort of fast food sandwich and they are one of the oldest street food still eaten today. This recipe is very close to how grandmothers would do it, even though it seems that in the ancient recipe no use of lard is recorded. But after I tried it a couple of time, I found out that the masa with lard tastes much nicer! They are not quick to make, so make more once and deep freeze them for future use.
Ca. 20 pcs
Ready in 3 hours + other 1.5H cooking
20 pieces
2 tbs chilli powder
2 tsp salt
1 tbs paprika
1 tbs garlic powder
1 tbs ground black pepper
1 tbs cumin powder
1 onion
1 kg boston butt meat
half glass vegetable oil
1 big onion finely chopped
2 garlic cloves finely chopped
1 jalapeno finely chopped
Plantain leaves cut into squares 30×30 cm
1 kg white cornmeal
1 tbs baking powder
250 gr lard
1 tsp salt
1 glass warm water
Sour cream to serve
Combine all powder and spices and retain 1 teaspoon.
Put the meat into a saucepan, cover with spices and completely cover (3 cm at least) the meat with water. Bring to boil and let simmer for 3 hours circa. Set aside. Cool down take the meat and make it in smaller pieces and retain the cooking liquid.
In a large mixing bowl place the cronmeal, the baking powder, the salt , the lard room-temperature and the water and start kneading, add as much meat cooking liquid as necessary to form a dough soft and wet. Set aside.
In a pan, fry the onion, garlic and jalapeno chopped with the teaspoon of spices. Add the meat and stir fry for 5 minutes. Set aside.
Place a leave of plantain leave (25×20 cm) on a table, spread 2 tbs of cornmeal mixture in a rectangle of 7×15 cm, spoOn into the center of the cornmeal spread a line of meat mixture (3×8 cm), close the leave so that the cornmeal dough surrounds the meat. Pack each cornmeal roll into the leave and seal it with cooking twine.
Place the tamales upright position in a steamer and steam them for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Alternatively you can place them in a sauce pan, add water to cover half of them (the water should be below 3 cm from the top of tamales), bring to boil and then, low heat let simmer for the same timing above. Serve hot with sour cream (tell your guest to unwrap them before eating – the leave is not edible).
