Tamales: Green Chile, with Mushroom/Cheese or Chicken

Sky

Sunday, and I made my JT some tamales, but I’m missing our boys, Max and Sky, as moms do (something fierce), wishing I could fix them dinner and spend the evening with them. Get teased, talk politics, consider the weather. Try to force them to eat seconds. What we do.

But they are far away, as is the way with 21^st century 20-somethings, for them, that is as it should be. They are happily embedded in London and California, far from their New Mexico first-home.  So we spoke on the phone this weekend. Their voices good to hear, the stories of their weeks the most important news on the planet. Then I went to the market and got them both some Hatch green chiles, some Chimayo red chiles, some Masa Harina, some dried corn husks, some New Mexico, which I’m packaging up to mail tomorrow.  The sweet young man at the grocery checkout was Somebody’s Son. As he was swiping in the 9^th can of green chile – he said, “Yeah! Send ‘em some Hatch!”

Max

As I cooked up my own batch of tamales, the kitchen steamed up with a warm fragrance: corn and chile.  Some ancient variant on that fine smell must have been well known to the mommas and their sons that made this place home through time, hundreds of years of warm good corn smells gracing the cave kitchens up on the Mesas that are scattered across the Rio Grand Valley, then the pueblos, then the Spanish settlements, finally finding their way to the steam in my kitchen today. I’m sending that sweet fragrance to London, a mom-conduit across seas and centuries. And on to the high granite mountains, the Sierra Nevada. To let the boys cook their way home for a meal, get transported though the steam.  

Music to cook Tamales by:  Miles Away, by Brent Berry, he's one of the best Taos hums.  

Green chili Veg or chicken tamales:

One Recipe makes 10, I find 1 small can of hot Hatch chili works fine for 10.
(It was an important discovery for me to realize that I wasn't required to make 50.)

Soak 10 corn husks for 20-30 minutes in warm water to soften. 

Cut 10 little strips like ribbons for tying them off.

Masa:

Beat together: with an electric mixer if you've got one, a whisk or spoon if not:

¼ cup solid vegetable shortening with

Add in dry and wet ingredients, alternating by ½ cups:

- 1.5 cups water (or chicken broth from cooking chicken)

- 1.5 cups masa harina + ½ teaspoon salt + 1 1/4 tsp baking powder

Filling, Chicken version:

Place 2 chicken breasts in a 2 cups water with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, then  simmer for 15 minutes til cooked through (center to 165 degrees F).

Let chicken cool, and shred with a fork or your fingers.

Heat shredded chicken in a little oil, along with spices of your choice:

Red pepper, black pepper, chopped garlic, salt, Mexican oregano, juniper, cumin.

Fill each tamales with:

1.5 tablespoon shredded chicken (if some is left over, good for a chicken salad later)

       + ~teaspoon of green chili – fresh roasted and chopped or can/jar

___________________________________

Filling, Veg Mushroom corn option:

Cook ¾ cup chopped fresh mushrooms and a little corn (cut off a cobb or frozen) in a little butter with a few cloves of garlic and oregano (~1 Tbl per tamale)

+ 1 Tbl grated jack cheese per tamale

+ ~ teaspoon of green chili,  – fresh roasted and chopped or can/jar

Assembly:

Smear heaping Tbl (about 1½ Tbl total) masa near the center of a water-soaked corn husk, about ¼- ½ inch thick.

Place 1-2 Tbl total filling of choice in the center of the masa

Use the husk to wrap up the masa around the filling, and fold the tamale closed; try to get masa to surround the filling, but it isn’t essential. The pointed part of the corn husk is folded up to make the bottom, sides folded in.  Tie of the top with a little ribbon of corn husk.

Steam tamales ~55 minutes