Mission: NOT Impossible

Of all the cuisines, Mexican is one of my all-time favorites.  I love queso and chips as much as the next guy, but for me the ultimate Mexican dish is tamales.  And they are hard to come by. Not many restaurants serve them and it’s even harder to find a person who makes them.  I know. For years, I’ve wanted to learn to make them. I’ve always been told that they are soooooo hard to make.  They are soooooo complicated. They are such a project that someone’s grandmother might make them for a very special occasion. So, I’ve merely dreamed and aspired to become a tamale cook for a very long time.  

I came across an old 1980’s Mexican cookbook that a friend was throwing out.  I scooped it up and there it was.  A tamale recipe.  I read it over and over again because I just couldn’t grasp what was so difficult about what I was reading.  And then it happened.  I bought a Boston butt and I made tamales.

I don’t know what I’ve been waiting on. I let others convince me that this was some insurmountable task. But here’s the news flash…it is not difficult to make tamales.  At all.  It takes some time, but it’s not hard. And, they were fabulous!

I started with a Boston butt; trim excess fat and cut into pieces

 

Stewing on the stovetop for about an hour

Guajillo chiles are the base for the sauce

Gorgeous color!  Homemade enchilada sauce

I love that happy little corn man

You spread the masa on the corn husk with your fingers

Add a little filling

Fold sides over filling and pointed end under

Steam bath for about an hour

My finished product

OMG!  My tamales were fantastic, if I do say so myself!  The sauce has out-of-this-world flavor.  It’s so simple to make. You soak the chiles in hot water to soften them up, then remove seeds and puree them with the soaking liquid. Then you cook the puree with some garlic, flour, vinegar, cumin and oregano. Nothing difficult about that. The pork is stewed with some garlic, onion, bay leaf and peppercorns. After it’s cooked, you shred it, mix with sauce and refrigerate overnight.  Nothing hard about that. 

You also save the pork broth for the masa. Refrigerate that overnight so you can skim the fat off before mixing up the masa.  The next day, you simply mix the masa with warm broth, shortening, and baking powder until it becomes a soft, wet dough.  You soak your corn husks in hot water for about an hour to make them pliable. Then, it’s just a matter of spreading out some masa, add some filling and fold.  They steam for about an hour and then you are ready to dig in. The masa was so soft and tender and flavorful. This is key because even in restaurants I’ve had tamales with dried out masa and it ruined the whole dish. The pork was tender and that sauce, oh the sauce!   

And none of this was hard to do!  It takes some time, but anything worth doing is worth the time. My parents came to dinner and we all fell in love with the tamales.  So much so that later that  week, I made another batch.  A double batch!

The Whole Enchilada

Clearly, the holidays are already interfering with my blog schedule.  And I'm not likin' it.  But, I'll do my best to post meaningful (?) information for you, all my friends.  I don't want to disappoint you :-)

Most weeknights, I morph into Sandra Lee and conduct my own episode of "Semi-Homemade" especially now that I have "regular hours." (How does the rest of the world handle this regular hour thing? I'm not good at people tellling me what to do.)  Anyway, I come blasting in the door from work, head straight to the kitchen, get a glass of wine first and foremost!, then start getting food on the table. And, I'll admit, this fast and furious style of meal preparation doesn't often lead to exotic food brimming with Wow-factor.  But, the other night, I did it.  I whipped up the fastest, easiest and tastiest supper.  So, tasty that it surprised Neil.  It was almost like he was expecting to just sort of like it, but he ended up loving it, and once again, thinking that I'm a genius. 

It was Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas.  Now, let me give you a little back story.  Once upon a time, my sister Katherine lived in Colorado.  Out there people make and eat green chile on EVERYTHING. I'm not exaggerating: breakfast burritos, omelets, biscuits, sandwiches, meat, enchiladas and all other forms of Mexican food, EVERYTHING.  Katherine makes a mean pot of the stuff herself.  It's just that good.  Well, my mom really fell in love with it.  As you can imagine, flying across the country with a bunch of ziplocs full of green chile would most likely end in disaster.  (Remind me to tell you sometime about the styrofoam bait bucket full of fresh crab that was in the overhead bin.)

So, mom found Old El Paso green chile enchilada sauce in the Colorado grocery stores.  She brought a bunch back because we'd never seen it here in our stores.  She searched far and wide, but alas, here in the Deep South, no one knew what she was talking about.  Everytime my sister came home, she had to lug a stash of canned green chile for my mom.  Dottie became a chicken enchilada machine.  I kept telling mom to have the grocery store order it.  I don't think she ever did.  So, anyway, the other day I was checking out the myriad of refried beans in the store these days when I looked up and there it was.  Old El Paso green chile enchilada sauce. Now, I'll submit to you that perhaps our stores have been carrying this for quite some time now, but I just haven't looked for it.  I guess I just had it in my mind that canned green chile in South Carolina just wasn't meant to be.  Well, it's here and I bought it with exuberance and headed to the kitchen.

Pre-Bake

Post-Bake

On the Plate

I basically just followed the recipe on the can.  In the past, we've made these rolled up the traditional way but also flat, like in stacks, which works well too.  In a nut-shell, you saute some chicken until done.  I used about a pound of chicken tenders and then shredded them. Then, you mix them with cream cheese (I like the lower fat Neufchatel) and green chiles until it gets melty and mixed together well.  Spoon into flour tortillas, roll and place seam side down in your baking dish.  Pour 2 cans of the sauce over, sprinkle with some cheddar and pop in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350.  Then, present to your husband, or wife, or whomever and they will love it and think you're a genius.  

That's it for this episode of "Semi-Homemade with Elizabeth.  Thanks for joining us.  Stay Classy Columbia."