Saturday, March 6, 2010

Tamales - 135



Today we were at a local farmer's market where people were selling all kinds of homemade salsas, barbecue sauces, baked goods and TAMALES. Everything looked good, and it had been a while since we'd had a good TAMAL, so we decided to buy 1/2 dozen and see if we liked them.

Remember: I didn't promise to cook Mexican food every day. I only promised to try and it eat every day. So far, so good, but it is hard when you're on a trip with other people or when you're sick. Today I had no good excuse, although I could claim to still be recovering from last week's bout of bronchitis.

TAMALES are not hard to make, but they're time consuming and you need a lot of space and a helper or two, if possible. My kitchen is small and I have found that I have to move the whole tamal making operation out onto the dining room table, which then makes a big mess everywhere. So, if I can buy good ones - I do.

We had two for lunch today - uno de puerco de chile rojo y el otro de pollo y chile jalapeño. They were both delicious, and so much so that I wondered if the masa (dough) had been made with manteca (lard) in the traditional way. I console myself by saying that I only ate 1/2 of each tamal equaling one whole one...

When talking about TAMALES remember that one is a TAMAL and the -e- only gets added to the end when you're also adding an -s- to pluralize. There is no such thing as a tamale. If you think you've seen it that way over the years, it's just a common misspelling of the word.

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