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All set to wrap and roll
Mexican tamales are easy to make if friends join in
Appeared in The Boston Globe - September 11, 2002
By Jonathan Bloom, Globe Correspondent
While tomalleys, the slippery green livers of the lobster, have been part of the New England culinary vocabulary for centuries, tamales, the steamed Mexican corn treats, are just starting to catch on.
Few dishes make a more interesting presentation than tamales, which are corn dough mixed with a filling and steamed in a corn husk. Each diner unwraps the tamale from its husk paper to find an edible gift. Tamales are so common in Mexican cuisine that there isn't a standard tamal (the singular form of the word).
"Tamales are the most regionally varied food in Mexico," writes Rick Bayless in "Mexico One Plate at a Time." "They can have everything from iguana to shrimp to grilled vegetables."
The fillings are not the lone variables; the wrappers also have several origins. At the Casa Romero restaurant in the Back Bay, cooks wrap tamales in banana leaves, a technique common in southern Mexico. "There are so many recipes for tamales - it's basically just a dumpling," says Leo Romero of Casa Romero. "They're one of the oldest forms of cooking in the Western Hemisphere."
Cambridge's Casa Mexico uses corn husks. Though both restaurants offer tamales, they're usually made by and for large gatherings. Tamal making is such a communal activity that there is even a word for the party: tamalada.
Says Bayless: "They always are related to a special occasion because tamales are hand work. It's sort of like making dumplings in Asia: you get a bunch of people together and you make them, then you have a party."
Another reason you wouldn't make them for dinner too often is that shopping for the ingredients - especially the corn husk wrappers - can be a bit challenging. Mexican and most Latin American grocers carry the corn paper. The dried masa mix is easier to find, as most supermarkets stock it in the international aisle.
With those items in hand, an important decision awaits: the kind of shortening to use. Most Mexican tamales are made with lard, both for flavor and texture. Solid vegetable shortening, butter, and oil are recommended.
"Most people don't know that lard has half the cholesterol and half the saturated fat of butter," Bayless says. "And it has way more flavor than vegetable oil."
Both Romero and Joshua Pita, Casa Mexico's manager, agree with Bayless, but concede to their clientele by avoiding lard. "Even though it would be tastier with lard, we use soybean oil because people don't like the idea of eating lard," Pita says.
Once you decide which shortening to use, it's time for the tamalada. While I'm not sure two people constitute a party, I threw a tamalada for the first time and had great success.
Tamales aren't backbreaking work, they just take a while. Because most recipes produce such large quantities, it's probably best to wait for more people to join the party. "It's usually a collective cooking process," Romero says, like "an assembly line."
Before beginning, soak the dried husks in warm water to make them pliable. Then drain them. While one person spoons the dough into the husks, another can add the filling, and a third can fold the husk into a neat package and tie it with string.
Then the tamales steam, during which time you pay them no attention. At that point, you can prepare homemade pico de gallo (a rough tomato-based salsa) for dipping.
Because there was so much leftover dough from my tamalada, I made some sweet tamales by adding sugar to the dough; the sweet versions are just as common as the savory. My nontraditional filling involved mixing chocolate chips and banana slices into the dough before wrapping and steaming.
In the end, it was a long session at the stove, three hours to make about 40 tamales. "It's just like anything else," says Casa Mexico's Pita. "It takes some time, but it's worth the effort." Maybe that's why the Hispanic clerk at the produce section where I shopped wished me luck when I told him it would be my first tamalada.
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