Text 18944, 113 rader
Skriven 2009-01-02 15:12:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av ALLEN PRUNTY
Ärende: Re: He never drank water
================================
-=> Quoting Allen Prunty to Jim Weller <=-

 >  GJ> "...he never drank water, he only drank wine".

 AP> Yeah... and W.C. Fields didn't drink water because fish ____ in it!


"Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon
rising. It was the only exercise I ever got."


MMMMM-----Meal-Master - formatted by MMCONV  2.10

     Title: Tom's Tamales Part 1
Categories: Mexican
  Servings: 15

      3 c  masa
      2 c  water
  1 1/2 ts salt
  4 1/2 oz lard
           Salsa
     15    corn husks
           FILLINGS:
           salsa
           Queso de Papa
           Roasted poblanos or
           jalapenos
           braised pork
           fresh cut corn
           olives
           braised chicken thighs

I miss My Tamale Lady. My Tamale Lady started out as two rival
tamale ladies, actually. One on the bus mall side of Havemeyer and
Broadway and one on (the now) BofA side. I would get off the bus or
the train at 8:15 AM to see them yelling insults across the
intersection at each other. In the end, after months of tamale turf
war, the other tamale lady moved to the Broadway G train stop and my
Tamale Lady became my only tamale lady.

In the end there were many reasons why my lady won: A) she was far
more surly and frightening even though she is barely five feet tall
and may weigh 85lbs. and B) her tamales were better.

After a while I started to develop a personal reward system around
my Tamale Lady. If I hustled myself out of bed early enough to
arrive at work with plenty of time to spare I could buy $5 worth of
tamales (that's 5 tamales for those of you who aren't fluent in
current shopping cart vendor market prices) for myself and my crew
and then bop to work with a steaming plastic bag of tamales.

It was a great system. I got to work with time for a pre-game coffee
FAR more often, I could style the kitchen folks with tamales and
have a brunch snack that was far more enticing than anything I could
think of.

Unfortunately that all came to an end this fall when my Tamale Lady
mysteriously went missing from her hard-won corner. Was I arriving
too late? Sometimes she would sell out and go home, but a week
straight? I asked other people who came off the train earlier in the
day and they hadn't seen her either.

I began to despair. So heart-sick in fact that I secretly fantasied
about having a Southern California-style tamale Thanksgiving. No
turkey. No stuffing. Just tamales and all the fixing.

Anyway, I finally got so desperate for tamales of quality that I set
out one recent evening to make tamales in the small, tube-like style
of my dearly missed, mean as piss, our Lady of Tamales.

I wish I could tell you that making tamales is hard but it's not.

Masa

Buy a bag of store bought masa and (before you do anything else) add
2 parts water to 3 parts masa along with a good amount of salt (a
half teaspoon per cup of masa) and a good amount of fat (olive oil,
lard, whatever. 1 1/2 oz. per cup of masa. You'll need to cut in the
lard with a potato masher or like). I also added some salsa to add
color and flavor. Mix well with your hands and then cover with some
plastic wrap.

Don't be fooled people. Lard is NOT going to make or break your
tamales. Many people are a real sticklers for lard and, while I
think that what passes for refried beans in this city are total shit
because of the absence of lard, tamales will not suffer nearly as
greatly without the magic animal fat.

Husks

Anyway, the next thing you want to do is start to soak your corn
husks (available at any Mexican bodega in cellophane bags near the
dried herbs/chiles) in hot water. They'll need to be submerged. I
just turned the dome shaped heavy lid of my small stock pot upside
down to insure that my husks were all the way under.

Husks getting wet? Masa incorporating? Yeah you!


  From: Http://Groceryguy.Blogspot.Com  
 
MMMMM-------------------------------------------------


Cheers

YK Jim


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