tamales

tamales seemed like a great way to use up the leftover carnitas from last night. you do need a few special ingredients for this. first, you need some dried corn husks, though you can use fresh ones too, or even other things like banana leaves for example. since these are the first tamales i've made, i can't say one wrapper is better than the other, but supposedly the corn husks imparts good flavor to the tamales. the dried husks need to soak for a while - i went with about an hour, though i've seen everything from 5 minutes to 2 hours in various recipes...

traditionally you make the dough through a laborious process beginning with dried corn. here i started with the instant tamale corn flour sold in hispanic supermarkets instead. you make the dough by mixing the flour with water, a lipid (i used lard per the flour container instructions, vegetable oil seems to be a popular alternative), and some seasoning. I added cumin, ancho chile powder, salt and paprika. basically what you want is a peanut butter like consistency.

then you just assemble. slather on the dough, add some filling - in this case the carnitas - and wrap. the whole batch goes in a steamer for one hour. again i saw a wide range of cook times when i was researching recipes - from one to two hours. i'm rather impatient, so an hour and a quarter sounded good to me.

i served this with more of my make-shift mexican cream-like dressing: yogurt, salt, lime and cilantro. apparently tamales are traditionally served with no salsas. but then again traditionally they're not made by me. end result was quite delicious - moist, soft, and great flavor in both the dough and meat. yumm!