Tamales

None of what you're about to see was performed by a stunt double.  After two weeks of enchiladas and one day of eating Mexican food that came out of a box, it was time to blow the roof off of this thing. FNM has achieved legendary status with one of my better half's coworkers and he was on the ticket for tonight's meal; we had to raise the bar again.

If I had to level a complaint at Fiesta at Rick's, it's that the pages keep falling out.  We've already taped several back in and Pork Picadillo Sweet Corn Tamales has now joined that list.  As an appetizer, we also cranked out Plantain-Stuffed Chipotle Chiles in Escabeche, although its page remains embedded in the book.  Read on!

I found and visited a bunch of new sources for Mexican ingredients this week.  As a bonus, all of these stores are well stocked and in a one block radius of each other.  The bad news is that none of these places have websites!  I have included all of their information in the sourcing guide on the right, so fear not.

At Mexican (Dry) Food I got piloncillo, banana leaves, canella, and dried chipotles; at the Latin American Emporium I got ripe plantains; and at Perola's I got raisins.  There was also a fair amount of Mexican cheese to be had at a few of them, which is great because there is a worldly cheese store right around the corner from them that does not. Shame.

Chiles

So this is the Escabeche part simmering on the stove. The important thing to know is that Escabeche means "Pickle" or "Marinade". Just about all of the spices in this dish find their way into this part of the prep.  I would suggest smashing your piloncillo with a hammer before dropping it into the pan because it takes forever to dissolve if you just drop in a whole cone.

So the problem with finding authentic Mexican grocers is that they give you authentic Mexican ingredients.  Apparently if you're in the US and ask for dried chipotles, you're given chiles moritas.  If you're in Mexico and ask for chipotles, you're given chiles meco.  Likewise, if you're in a Mexican grocer in Canada and ask for chipotles, you're given chiles meco. Long story short, it wasn't until I got home that I realized that I had the wrong chipotles.  Whoops.

So when you're boiling up a pot full of chipotles, crack a window and turn on your exhaust fan, otherwise you'll quickly find yourself having a nice coughing fit.  That great burning sensation is what keeps 'em coming back for more.  After boiling and letting them sit, I ripped the tops off and got all of the seeds out.  I essentially ran them under cold water to flush the seeds out.  It worked pretty good. Or so I thought.

There is the plantain and onion doing its thing with a little bit of garlic.  No surprises here at all.  I gave it maybe a scant teaspoon of salt.

The last step was to spoon the plantain filling into the chipotles.  No problems there.  I had cleaned them all out previously and just had to get the right amount of filling in each.  There was quite the range of sizes in these chipotles so some were eliminated simply for being too large.

There is the finished dish.  We let them marinate for about 3 hours before they were served.  I played guinea pig and ate the first one in front of our guests; a move that I'm glad I made.  In an entire batch, I must've picked the one that was still hiding some seeds. After a few bites I was sent into a fit of hiccups from the ball of fire I was holding in my mouth. While it didn't exactly sell our guests on the rest of the chiles, I was glad that I got the booby-trapped one. Eventually they proceeded with caution and found them to be not that hot at all.  When I went back for a second one I was relieved to find out that not all of them were small vessels of molten lava.

Now, incorrect chiles aside (we will be attempting this again after we obtain the correct ingredients) I don't particularly see eye to eye with this dish. There are way too many competing flavours for my tastes.  You might like four different musicians, but you don't make them all better by playing their albums at the same time.  The end result is just a bunch of noise. I'm glad that we had also knocked out a bowl of guacamole and provided chips because the chipotles didn't see much attention after the initial round.

Tamales


Thankfully, the tamales turned out to be quite tasty.

Pork Picadillo (onion, pork, garlic, tomatoes, raisins, peanuts, and a boat load of spices)

Of all things that have been difficult to find, I never figured that 'coarse ground pork' would be one of them. In my mind, I would seek out a butcher, who would be a deft, grey haired man with dark eyebrows, a white coat, and a black tie.  I would ask for one pound of coarse ground pork and he would give me a subtle nod acknowledging that I was a discerning customer who had sought out the road less traveled.  He would select a choice cut of meat and proceed to adjust the dials on his stainless steel instruments. The end product would be folded expertly into a piece of brown craft paper and sealed with a length of masking tape.

Wow.  What type of fantasy world do I live in?

Two of our local grocery stores do not even have meat counters.  I did buy a plastic wrap encased tray of run-of-the-mill lean ground pork as insurance however.  The third grocery store has a meat counter but when I asked the wizened man behind it, he threw up his arms in despair. "WYSIWYG" he told me with a few extra words. The only piece of equipment they have backstage is a band-saw which they use for rending carcasses and dreams of gourmet meals. There were no tools of the trade here.

Time constraints provided me with only one other option, the small butcher shop just up the road from my place.  It was here that I was not provided with coarse ground pork, but the worst, most vile customer service I have ever received.  There was no nod of approval, only outright disdain that I had the audacity to ask for something out of the ordinary.  It was then that I was shown a frozen brick of ground pork and told that it was 'what I wanted' and 'would work'.  Upon my refusal, the employee became quite surly and that was my cue to leave.

Banana leaves are huge.  I mean, I guess it's something that we've all seen in photographs and videos, but it never occurred to me just how large until I started unfolding a rain-forest in the kitchen.  You've got to tear them into 30cm sections, along with a bunch of smaller ribbons for tying things shut.  This is really where Rick was a little too economical with his words and photos.  Not that it was a brain melting experience to figure out, but a diagram or two would've saved some head scratching.  So having done this once, I have developed some suggestions that will save you some time and effort.  First, try taking your 30cm sections from the skinnier end of the leaf, and your ribbons from the wider end.  You'll see why shortly.

Second, here is what the spreading of the corn batter should look like.  A roughly 10cm by 20cm rectangle that goes from the middle to the edge of the banana leaf.  Pay careful attention to the orientation of the ribs on the leaf.  I assembled one in the opposite orientation and it didn't work so hot.

The meat goes in the middle of the banana leaf, centered on the right hand half of your corn.  The quantities provided worked well for me but you'll have to use your judgement.

Thanks to the magic of computers, you now have a visual aide in the folding of your tamale.  Just follow the numbers and everything will be fine.  Make sure you line up your corn batter to get a good seal around your meat.

Here is the part where you'll be happy to have the longest ties that you can muster.  You'll want to tie a Reef Knot or something similar; a single overhand knot will not do.  Make sure you tie off your tamale in both directions.  It's important.

Before and after photos of our pile of tamales; they're sitting on the wok's bamboo steamer basket.  The only caveat is that the wok doesn't have a lot of capacity for water once the basket is in it.  I had to refill the water about half way through the 75 minutes that they were steaming for. Notice the crazy colour change in the banana leaves; that's not just improper colour balance.  The cooked masa also expands a noticeable amount, which is why it's important to tie the tamales in both directions.  You can see some of the banana leaves have erupted in the after photo.

Dinner!  I was initially apprehensive about them actually being cooked because they came out a little more moist than I had expected (moist after being steamed? That can't be right. Duh).  But the masa was cooked and they passed a taste test by us and our guests so I declared them done.

I call this photo: Tamale at Dawn.  We didn't get through all of them at dinner because they can be quite filling and so put a few in the fridge to eat later.  I was pleased to see that they still have all of their magic the next morning and make a pretty good breakfast food.  So there you have it, stuffed chipotles and tamales.  That's a Mexican meal if I ever saw one. 

Herb Garden Update

So we're just about ready to start transplanting most things, we're just waiting on some pots. The tomatoes look really strong and the thyme and oregano are 'bushy' to say the least.

The cilantro all got moved into cilantroville.  Everybody says that it doesn't transplant well but everything looks good so far.

'Super Chili F1'  (capsicum annuum)

The hot pepper plants look really consistent and strong.  These are going to be responsible for a lot of heartburn.