Tamale Class
Hey everyone, its Gwynie! I'm doing a guest entry, I specifically took this class to make Astrid jealous since she was off to the East Coast to play in the Howe Cup. Well I think she's rather pleased that I know how to make them, so much for sibling rivalry. I made 3 types of tamales: plain with chipilin (a herb), mole negro with chicken and a dessert one,(pineapple with raisins). That evening I had a tamale party to try them. Well worth the effort.
Rebecca Sibrack of Edible Explorations says that tamales are super easy to make and I agree. Piedmont Adult School has many interesting classes, including cooking classes. I have always wanted to take a cooking class as the aromas wafted over to my non cooking classes and this was the perfect opportunity. The class was on a Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm and we got busy right from the start.
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| From Tamale class |
We soaked the corn husks in warm water, defrosted the frozen banana leaves and wiped them down. We used two types of masa for our tamalas, the fresh and the dry. Masa, which literally translated means dough, is what we would call the fresh, already hydrated dough. We also used the Maseca, or masa harina (dough flour), the dry masa we needed to re-hydrate with our hot stock. The fresh masa we used was purchased at Primavera at the Berkeley farmers market. You can pre-order masa for tamales from Flacos, but theirs comes with vegetable shortening already mixed in. (Per Rebecca's explanation)
We did two methods of adding the masa harina and fat . With the first method the fat was added to the masa and then mixed and with the second method the fat was whipped/creamed first and then the masa was added in small handfuls at a time. I liked the latter method because it produced a much fluffier and lighter dough. The test was to take a pinch of dough and drop it into a glass of water. The first method the dough sank like a stone to the bottom and resulted in very stodgy tamales, the second method the dough pinch floated like a happy iceberg, oooh!
Chopped chipilin herbs added to the dough during mixing and then placed into the corn husks and steamed. The mole negro with chicken were cooked in banana leaves. The pot was lined with banana leaves before placing the tamales in to steam. For the dessert tamale we added fresh crushed pineapple to the dough after the fat was added which made it very slurry like. Again the dough was put into corn husks, sprinkled with raisins, folded up and then steamed.
So what did I learn from this fantastic hands on experience. Tamales take a while to make and cook but are leagues better in flavor, taste and texture to store bought ones. You can control exactly what fillings you have and if you're like me you put more flavor filling to masa harina ratio and to hell with the bursting. Vamos a comer! Gwynie
