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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >James, I would love to hear your tamale recipe.

Like almost everything else, there is no actual recipe.  But here is the 
general idea.

For the masa, you can use 'masa harina' from the grocery store or tienda.

But if you have dried hard corn, boil it in lime water (water to which a 
couple tablespoons of lime [calcium oxide] has been added, pickling lime 
works 
fine) and then let it soak or simmer until the hulls begin to disappear. This 
yields hominy.  Mash or grind the hominy.

Cut meat of any kind, or meat with beans, or meat with okara (that's not a 
typo, okara, not okra), with some chilis and cilantro, some epazote if you 
have 
it.

Drain the broth  from cooking the meat and add the broth to the mashed corn 
one to one (one cup corn, one cup broth).  Mash or grind it until it is a 
smooth, thin dough.  This is masa that has not gone through the drying stage 
make 
'harina' (flour).

Soak trimmed corn husks in hot water to soften them.  Spread the masa on the 
corn husk 1/2" thick or so, put a line of the chopped meat in the middle, and 
roll the whole affair up.  It isn't necessary to tie them, although you can.  
If the husks are long or untrimmed, you can tuck the ends under.

For supper, stack the tamales in the steamer like crossed and steam them for 
20 minutes.

Or put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them.  When they are as hard as 
corncobs, pack them into a large heavy freezer bag.  Frozen this way they are 
loose and you can take out what you want for supper and leave the rest.  
Stack 
them into the steamer and steam them for 30 minutes or a little less.

Grow, or buy, some of thise large dried chili peppers.  For a dozen tamales, 
remove the seeds from four or five of the peppers and boil them in half a 
pint 
of water for fifteen minutes.  Remove and discard the peppers.  Add a bit of 
curry or cumin, some salt, and then mix a teaspoon to two teaspoons of 
arrowroot powder or cornstarch in a half cup of so of cold water and add that 
to the 
chili sauce.  Bring it to enough of a boil to thicken it.  

This is the sauce for supper.

You can pack the tamales (room temp) into quart jars, as many as you can jamb 
in there, and then make the chili sauce WITHOUT the arrowroot or cornstarch, 
and fill the jars to within 1/2 inch of the top.  Process as you would any 
meat, 15 lbs for 50 minutes or so.  The masa will thicken the sauce to the 
right 
consistancy.

If you don't have corn husks, here is something we've done hundreds of times. 
  If you have one of those corn gems pans that makes the little cornbread 
shaped like an ear of corn, lightly oil each cavity and press the masa in 
making 
a trough with your thumb.  Fill the trough with filling and fold over the 
masa 
to cover it.  Carefully lift out the whole thing and place on a cookie sheet 
and freeze. When you put the frozen tamales in the steamer, the masa sets and 
with care you can serve them out of the steamer intact.

Frozen tamales keep well half a year and passibly for a year.  Canned ones 
keep forever.

If you grow a small patch of hard corn, some chilis, a bush or two of 
cilantro, and have some homestead beast or wild beast or the other, you can 
have a 
rather elegant and otherwise expensive entre for no cash whatever.

We are still eating on a huge stash of tamales where we made an entire 
weather goat into cabrito tamales.

Tamales are twenty to thirty minutes from the freezer to the table and five 
minutes from the jar to the table.  They are a really good homestead standby. 
 
We can't grow avocados (although we buy them in season) but some homestead 
sour cream, a little grated homestead cheese, and some lettuce and tomatoes 
from 
the garden homemade chipotle and I've scarcely had better in Mexico.


James