Kids Make Black Bean Tamales

Kids love working with their hands, which makes tamales--mixing the dough, wrapping it in corn husks--the perfect assignment for our "food appreciation" classes.

This week on our virtual world culinary tour we are in Puebla, a city south of Mexico City known for its colorful ceramics and its clever chefs. But really, tamales are almost ubiquitous in Mexico, an emblematic part of a corn culture that stretches back thousands of years and is central to the country's cuisine.

An ancient technique for treating corn is to soak the dried kernels in a solution of lye or lime to remove the tough hull or pericarp. Although the original cooks surely did not know it at the time, this process--called nixtimalization--has the added benefit of making the essential niacin in the corn available for human digestion. The soft part of the corn can then be ground into a meal--or masa--that is the staple for so many uses, such as making tortillas and tamales.

Masa is readily available in Latin groceries or even in convenience stores catering to immigrants from south of the border. We look for a masa specifically designed for tamales. It is a rougher grind with a pleasing texture. You will also need corn husks, which are sold dried, usually in a stack of several dozen. Soak these 24 hours in advance in plenty of water to soften them. Remove and stray corn silk.

Tamales can be stuffed with almost anything: roast chicken or pork, beans or other cooked vegetables, even chocolate or other sweets to make dessert tamales. We stuffed ours with black beans cooked with onion, garlic and red and green bell pepper. But you could use any other savory bean.

Making tamale dough is usually a two step process, first beating a fat such as lard or vegetable shortening into a fluffy mass, then mixing the corn meal with other ingredients before combining with the fat. Some people like to do the mixing parts with an electric blender to work air into the dough. But it can also be done by hand.

The easiest way to procede may be to just follow the directions on your package of masa. We made ours as follows.

In a large bowl, beat 2/3 cup chilled lard or vegetable shortening until light and almost fluffy.

In a separate bowl, mix 2 cups masa with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add 2 cups warm broth (such as chicken stock or vegetable stock) or water and stir well. Empty the dough into the fat and combine. Use a wooden spoon to beat the dough until it is soft and fluffy. Add more liquid if it is too stiff.

Lay a softened corn husk on a flat work surface and spoon a small fistful of dough into the center (it helps to use wider rather than narrower husks). Use a knife or a stiff spatula to spread the dough out, leaving several inches of husk uncovered at the top and bottom and an inch or so on the sides. Into the middle of the dough spoon some prepared beans. Now fold the tamale over, rolling the dough into a sausage shape. Wrap the husk closed, like a big cigar, and fold over the narrow bottom part to seal the tamale on one end. The fold should be two or three inches long. Wrap the end with a length of string and tie snuggly with a firm knot to hold the tamale together.

The finished tamales are cooked in a steamer. Lightweight aluminum tamale steamers are sold fairly inexpensively in Latin groceries. We used a pasta pot with a strainer insert. Or you could improvise a steamer using a wire rack at the bottom of a large pot. Stand the tamales in the steamer with the open ends pointing up. Pour about 1 inch water into the bottom and bring to a boil. Cover the pot snugly and steam at reduced heat for about one hour, or until the tamales are cooked through and firm.

This recipe makes a dozen or more tamales, depending on how big your corn husks are. To eat them, cut the string and unwrap the corn husk. Serve the tamales with your favorite sauce or salsa. We dressed ours with crema, a kind of liquid sour cream, and a dusting of fresh white cheese, or queso fresco. The kids begged for seconds.

Tamales Finale: A Eureka! Moment

Midway into my tamales project I decided to follow my wife's advice and bone up a little more on how to make tamales.

Up to this point, I had made two critical errors. The first was assuming I could buy a book about tamales and rely on it exclusively. The recipe I chose turned out to be a disaster (see earlier post). The second mistake was assuming the Maseca corn mix that is ubiquitous in these parts was my only choice as main ingredient for my tamale dough.

I cruised through several volumes by Mexican cookbook diva Diana Kennedy and maestro Rick Bayless, along with my other Mexican cookbooks, and found no guidance on using Maseca, other than Kennedy's absolute abhorrence of the stuff.

The preferred dough for tamales is made from fresh masa. We have seen fresh masa on our travels through Mexico, usually in a refrigerator case at the local grocery or market stall.

Corn is the basis of Mexican cuisine going back thousands of years. The natives developed a method of soaking dried corn with lye or lime--gathered from the ashes of wood fires in the case of lye, or from crushed seashells or rocks in the case of lime. The alkali chemicals in lye and lime help soften and remove the outer skin or pericarp of the corn kernel. This process, called nixtamalization, has the added benefit of making niacin--or vitamin B3, a vital nutrient--available for human digestion. Europeans who later developed corn cultures but skipped the nixtamalization process risked pellagra, a deadly wasting disease.

After the corn is nixtamalized, it is ground into fresh masa. When dried, it can be further processed into products such as Maseca, which is sort of the Hispanic equivalent of Bisquick. It can be used in almost anything, from tortillas to tamales, papusas, etc. There being no source of fresh masa that I know of here in the District of Columbia, I had assumed my only option was to use Maseca. But following Diana Kennedy's tip, I went on-line and, Bingo! I found a cousin to Maseca made specifically for tamales.

This product is ground somewhat coarser than ordinary Maseca, giving it a more traditional texture and mouth feel. I was hoping there also would be a viable recipe for tamale dough on the package.

A couple of phone calls later I had my 4.4-pound bag of Maseca para Tamales from a local Latino grocery. Sure enough, there was a recipe for tamale dough on the package. It was radically different from the one I had tried earlier with such horrible results. Where the previous recipe had called for almost twice as much dry ingredient as wet, the new recipe specified equal amounts of dry to wet. I knew this would solve the problem of a dough that was more like modeling clay and give me the creamy dough my wife had been looking for.

So we made the dough with the new corn mix and it turned out exactly the way we had hoped. It smeared easily onto the corn husks and was only slightly more difficult to wrap, being somewhat squishy. We steamed some tamales for dinner that night, accompanying them with pork carnitas and a huitlacoche enchilada from one of our neighborhood takeouts.

The tamales were light and delicious, the slightly moist savoriness of the chicken filling pairing nicely with the sweetness of the raisins and piquancy of the salsa verde. I'm especially fond of the rustic texture of these tamales and the faintly acrid flavor of the nixtamalized masa that it so Mexican and so unlike any other corn product.

Sometimes cooking takes perseverance and friendly advice. I also credit the Ceres & Bacchus blog, which last month carried a detailed and inspiring account of making Columbian-style tamales wrapped in banana leaves. Do try making tamales sometime. You need to do a little planning and have your ingredients ready. But once you get the hang of it, tamales aren't difficult at all, even for a gringo like me.

Tamales: Disaster Relief

After yesterday's comedy of stuffing too much masa into the mixing bowl, we collected ourselves and set about the task of actually making some tamales.

My wife joined me for a consult as I tried to decide on the best method for spreading the dough on the corn husks and folding the husks into neat little packages.

The first thing my wife commented on was the dough itself. She found it stiff.

"When I've seen ladies making tortillas, they smeared the dough on the husk," she said.

My dough was more like modeling clay. You had to press it with your fingers. I had suspected something was amiss because the recipe I was using, from a cookbook devoted to tamales, had said the dough should be "like a thick pudding." I wondered what kind of pudding the author had in mind.

We began constructing a mis en place for making tamales, meaning we lined up all our ingredients in assembly-line fashion. I wanted to make at least 20 tamales to take to the first of my "food appreciation" classes later in the day. Since the tamales need to steam for an hour on the stove top, I would have to start them cooking on the stove at school before the students arrived for the first class. That way they'd have some tamales to sample before the class ended. I would show them how to make the tamales, but they would eat the ones I prepared earlier. Then the next class would eat the tamales made by the first class. And so forth over the course of two days of classes.

So what you see in these pictures is our system for tamale production. The corn husks, purchased at a local Latino grocery, have been soaking overnight in a basin of water. We spread about 1/4 cup of dough in a rectangular shape in the center of the corn husk, leaving about two inches of husk uncovered at the top and bottom. On the dough we place a small dollop of chicken filling made with crushed tomato, oregano and cumin. Then we place a matchstick slice of potato and one of zucchini, followed by a small spoonfull of salsa verde and three or four golden raisins.

Since the corn husks vary in size, you learn along the way to vary the amount of dough you spread on the husk. The object is to have just enough dough so that you can overlap the edges of the husk when you fold it closed, then fold the ends over to create a packet. Too much dough and the package will not close. Too little dough and you are just wasting the unused husk.

Traditionally the bundle is tied with a strip of corn husk, but I decided that string--or butcher's twine--would be easier to learn with. Even though we are experienced cooks, we're just beginners where tamales are concerned.

I fumbled at first, but my wife caught on right away. What a surprise! What we really needed was a Mexican grandmother, someone who could show us how it's done. Still, before long, my wife had her own system. She was making three at a time. I was anxious to cook them and see how they tasted.

Tomorrow, a surprise turn, another lesson learned and a happy ending to our tamale saga.

Kids, Don't Try This at Home

Have you ever tried a cookbook recipe that was so wrong you wondered if anyone ever tested it before it went to the publisher?

I'm making tamales with the kids in my "food appreciation" classes. I approached the subject with some fear and trepidation, for, although I love Mexican food, and although I'm quite good preparing some Mexican foods, making tamales had somehow eluded me all these years.

I thought they'd be just the thing for Easter.

For a recipe, I sought a book exclusively about tamales. The author's bona fides appeared to be in good order. But something about the recipe didn't seem right: 12 cups of Masa, or corn flour mix; 7 cups of chicken broth; two cups of lard; 1 tablespoon salt.

Not that the ingredients or proportions sounded off. It was the quantity. Just mix in the blender with a paddle attachment, the author advised.

Against all my better instincts, I followed the directions. I was a bit alarmed as the 12 cups of masa dough piled higher and higher in the mixing bowl, finishing just short of the rim.

Something bad is going to happen here, I thought.

Trust me, I heard the author saying.

I turned on the blender--slowly--and began adding chicken broth.

Sure enough, the masa started to grow. And grow. And grow. Soon I was the main character in an I Love Lucy episode: Balls of masa were spillling out of the bowl. Balls of masa were leaping out of the bowl. And still the masa continued to grow. And grow. And grow.

I didn't know whether to curse or laugh outloud. I'd made a complete fool of myself and I had one hell of a mess to deal with. There was masa everywhere. Not what I needed first thing in the morning.

Finally, I'd had enough. Screw the blender. I dumped the whole thing on the counter top and started kneading it by hand.

I looked back at the recipe to see if I'd missed something. Had the author perhaps called for the use of a commercial-type blender, something much bigger than my household Kitchenaid? But the only guidance was this: "In the bowl of a heavy duty mixer...."

There were other things about this recipe that were just plain off. I looked at the huge pile of masa dough on the counter and started thinking this was going to make way more than the "2 or 3 dozen" tamales the author claimed. More like 5 or 6 dozen, it turns out.

The recipe also called for a 1/2-cup scoop of dough in each tamale. The author must have been using some kind of giant, Chernobyl-type corn husks to wrap her tamales. I'm finding that 1/4 cup of dough per tamale is more like it.

Too much chicken, not enough tomato in the filling. Quarter-inch slices from "large Russet potatoes" to be added to the filling, but no indication whether this meant a slice from the whole length of the potato, or something smaller. On and on...

"Did you look at other recipes?" my wife asked. "Usually when I'm researching something, I look at all my recipes before I start cooking."

Duh. Of course I hadn't. What was I thinking? I have volumes by Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy, as well as other Mexican cookboks I've collected over the years. I could easily have checked. In fact, a little voice had told me to check and I had ignored it. Whatever made me think that a cookbook, simply because it was devoted exclusively to tamales, would be more authoritative?

Lesson learned: There really are some crappy cookbooks out there, even the ones (maybe especially the ones) with all the gorgeous photos. Even the ones with glowing editorial reviews at Amazon.com. I must say, though, this one does have some dynamite illustrations on the many different ways to fill and tie the finished tamales.

Tomorrow, we put this episode into our memory bank and begin to actually assemble and cook our tamales.

To be continued....