Tamales 2: Squashment Day

You know what I like about tamales? They come pre-packaged, so you can put them in your pocket or backpack.  And when you're done eating them in as few bites as possible, you can toss the wrapper into the green bin or onto your neighbours lawn in name of composting.

I've put mole attempt number two on the back burner as we're still eating the original batch.  In the mean time, there is more Mexican food to be eaten.  This week's guests drove down from Ottawa to visit so we gave them the full on Toronto experience.  And when people think 'Toronto' they think 'Tamales' so make sure you've tied a square knot, and make the jump for Butternut Tamales with Chipotle Chicken!

What... we've got here is, corn husks, rehydrating.  Which I appreciate, because I bought a huge bag of dried corn husks that looks like they'll just sit on the shelve until I'm ready to use them.  Unlike banana leaves which seem a little more perishable once you take em out of the freezer.

And now a word from our stand mixer.  Here it is mixing up the tamala dough.  The nice girl at Mexican Dry foods suggested Maseca para Tamales so that found it's way into this recipe.  It feels more coarse between the fingers.  When a dollop magically floats on water, the stand mixer can take a smoke break.

Oh right! That's the butternut part of this whole thing.  I just crudely honked off the peel and sent it to the food processor with the grating wheel going.  Then you jam the whole works in the fridge for like an hour and then do everything else.

Tomatillo salsa is one of those things that also happens only within the GTA.  Those lovely jalapenos are courtesy of Bill's garden.  100 meter diet.  Next year, we're going to get it down to 10 meter.

I think the reason this type of thing is so popular is because the rest of the cooking takes so damn long, that unless you start at 12, you're always eating dinner at 9pm.  Especially in the case of tamales.

And while your tamala dough was chilling out, hopefully you were grilling up some chicken, because, that takes time too.  Not to mention the whole de-boning and skinning and shredding once it's done. Here it is shredded up with the canned chipotles en adobo.

Having done the banana leaf tamales and seeing the results of an insecure wrapping job (the dough explodes out all over the place) I was pretty shocked to see that these are cooked with one end complete open.  Insanity.  But that's how they roll; with the top open.   

I can now see the need for a special steamer.  With the open tops, these things have to stand up while they steam and that doesn't exactly jive with the wok.  Apropos we used chopsticks to fix up the height issue.

And it's all just a big tease, because after you're done steaming them, you have to let them cool so that they pull away from the husk.  But at some point in the future from when you start this project you will be able to eat them.  I promise.  Here they are sitting alongside some red rice minus the peas.  I had the peas.  I wanted to put them in.  I really did.

Denuded!  Man these are tasty.  And by my reckoning, just the right level of heat.  Anyone who has never had a fresh tamala needs to get their hands on some.  It's a long drawn out preparation but I could probably eat every single one of them if I wanted to.  One thing I would do if I had to do it again would be to crank up the amount of squash in the dough; it wasn't squashy enough for me. HA!

If you suspect that the colour is off in any of this week's pictures, I'd like to blame our new down-light in the kitchen.  The 50 watt halogens in it are like looking into the sun.