Culinary Chronicles: Oaxacan Black Bean Tamales

We made more tamales this morning.  This time they are filled with black beans flavored with Oaxacan pasilla chiles, garlic and hoja santa.  They were wrapped in banana leaves, but I'd already discarded them before bringing the plate to the table.  The filling was based on this recipe for tamales Miahuatecos from Zarela Martinez's cookbook The Food and Life of Oaxaca: Traditional Recipes from Mexico's Heart.  We didn't have any pumpkin to mix into the masa, so the sweet elements (brown sugar and canela [cinnamon])were excluded.  I love a mix of savory and sweet, so the next time I'd like to make the cinnamony pumpkin casings with the spicy black bean filling.  I know this sounds weird, my mom wrinkled her nose at the idea, but I might top one of these with Trader Joes seasonal pumpkin ice cream that's currently in my freezer.  Anyone a fan of sweet tamales?

Culinary Chronicles: Chorizo, Wild Mustard Greens and Potato Tamalés

We actually made these tamales on New Year's Day, a little late by New Mexico standards, where many families make and eat tamales on Christmas Eve.  We like to make them over the holidays and freeze them so that we can eat them on Sundays along with atole, remembering our favorite tradition from one of our joint trips to Mexico City.  In the neighborhood we were staying in there was this stand that would pop up outside the local church on Sunday that sold dozens of varieties of tamales and atoles.  Yum, so delicious.

This year we had chorizo on hand, but not a lot, so I came up with the potato and greens combination.  Its tasty.  We also made the same version of pork in red molé wrapped in banana leaves that I chronicled last year.

Weekend Edition: Tamales

This is a rather late weekend update, but I just couldn't get these photos processed in a timely manner. So, in the spirit of better late than never, here is a glimpse of last weekend's time consuming cooking project-- red molé pork tamales in banana leaves. As I've mentioned, my mom just came back from Oaxaca City. She usually carries pre-made packages of molé with her, which we hoard for special occasions in our freezer, because nothing can match molé from the source. Unfortunately this year her molé was taken from her at the airport (she didn't check her bag, grr), because the security personnel considered it a liquid/cream. Another guard argued with the first, but alas, the molé was seized. So, back in the states with no molé we ventured out to our local Mexican giant super-market, Pro's Ranch Market. They sell green and red molé in cubes at one of their deli counters. Below is their red molé. It was definitely different than the black molé that Mom would have brought us from Oaxaca, but it turned out to be delicious.

I talked about how I prepare the sauce before cooking the meat in it, here in a comment response to Maggie. After sautéing the onions I definitely mixed the paste into the dry pan and let it cook for a few minutes to darken it up, stirring constantly, before adding broth. In this case I was using thick cut pork chops as the meat, and I had browned them in the pan and then put them aside and used their fat to make the sauce. Adding the browned meat back in, it simmered on the stove top for an hour or so, until the meat was tender enough that it would shred like I wanted it to.

I used this cazuela that my mom had bought on a previous trip to Mexico. Its a very light weight pottery, but it cooked everything beautifully. I hadn't used it before, but I liked it. I'll definitely use it more often.

Once the meat was cooked and shredded I poured the sauce over it and refrigerated it over night. That was just a time saving measure because we were going to make the tamales on Sunday morning, and I wanted to minimize the prep time.

Molé tamales often have a banana leaf wrapper instead of corn husk. The banana leaf adds a different flavor to the tamale that goes well with the rich sauce. We bought ours at Pro's Market. As you can see, banana leaves are huge! They tear really easily though along those ribs, so its easy to get the small size that you need to wrap the tamales. They smelled so fresh, like green bananas, I wish the internet could capture smell.

The leaf has to be heated over a flame or steamed to soften it so that its flexible enough to wrap the tamale.

We used a pre-made masa, the corn dough, bought at Pro's Market.

Then the tamales are cooked over steam for 45 minutes to an hour.

They come out looking like this.

And the best part, they taste divine! We made about two dozen, ate a few, and then froze them in packages of four tamales, to enjoy on weekends over the next couple months along with some champurrado.