Tamales and Happy New Year!

Every year, Robert loves to tell people that all he wants for Christmas are tamales.  They are the perfect gift to unwrap.  Every Christmas I am sure that he is hoping he will find tamales waiting for him under the tree, and saddened when that special day passes by without tamales.

We have talked about making them ourselves, but had not found a Masa recipe to follow.  Well, this year we finally did it! Santa was not involved in bringing these to our house.  Nor was a famous Mamasita from another town.  We did some searching on the Internet and found a recipe for the dough and chicken and beef fillings.  He was in charge of the dough, and I was in charge of the fillings.

Now the dough is usually made using lard, which is not something we are highly fond of.  Instead, Robert used olive oil and chicken broth.  I think these two ingredients are what made the tamales taste SO GOOD and kept them moist.

 I knew there was a lot of work that goes into making tamales.  I've been told you need to start a day ahead.  Let me tell you, if you are planning on making a variety of fillings, maybe you should set aside three days.  Here's a picture of Gaby helping me shred the rotisserie chicken for one of the fillings:

 The corn husks need to be soaked for a least 3 hours to a day, turning them occasionally.

For the filling, starting from the far left, spicy beef, chicken (regular, mild, and spicy), beef and cheese, and chile and corn.  My advice is that you cook the batches separately, unless you feel like going through them like a box of See's Candies..  We were all getting so hungry! Tamales can take 45 minutes or longer to steam, so we were making them as fast as we could and putting them in the steamer without much organization.  Fortunately, the level of spiciness isn't too bad.  The only problem is that the spicy chicken has the one chile I didn't cook with the other ingredients.  I just chopped it up and mixed it in with the mild batch.

 And get the family involved.  The more hands, the merrier! The girls wanted to join in--mamasitas in training.  We had to keep a close eye on the little one.  She's really good at sneaking food to her belly.

    

            

The next time we make tamales, we are hoping to have the right pots.  These did the job though.  

All in all, it was a good learning experience.  We made a total of 71 tamales, and have leftover fillings to make more.  Our ratings included the following:

"Robert, these are really good! The dough has a very good flavor!"

"Neng, give some of these to your Auntie.  She'll like them!"

"UMMMM....WOW! UMMM...."

That's how we started the new year.  We tried something new.  We worked hard, and we worked together, to make something for everyone to enjoy.  We know what adjustments to make to make "next time" even better.  Hopefully "next time" will be sooner than Cinco de Mayo!