Over the holidays, I was given a wonderful gift — Aaron’s family recipe for tamales.  I’ve been wanting to learn how to make them for years!  However, with a family recipe there is a lot more pressure to get it right.  It took a bit of running around to get all of the ingredients.  The recipe makes 10 dozen or so tamales, which is good because they are very time consuming to make.

2 days!  Day 1 involved soaking the husks, cooking the pork, prepping the chiles, cooking the chiles, then milling the chilies into a very fine paste.  Day 2 was mixing the masa to the perfect consistency (does it float?), then assembling all of the tamales.  Those corn husks are tricky!

There were a couple of times where I asked Aaron for advice since it is his family’s recipe.  At this point he admitted that the men usually get kicked out of the kitchen during the tamale making process so he didn’t know a lot about the finer points of preparation. I called my MIL and she answered a lot of my questions.  Since it takes a long time to assemble them, per my MIL’s suggestion I put them in the freezer in batches to keep them well shaped until I had enough to steam.  She also recommended steaming them the same day I make them so they are easier to re-heat.

Halfway through the assembly process I ran out of masa, and my friend ran out to the mercado to pick up more.  I started with pre-mixed masa then added broth and lard until the consistency was right.  Once we ran out of meat and chile filling, there was a lot of masa left over!  I made an impromptu batch of sweet tamales with chocolate chips and dried cherries.  I used butter instead of the lard when combining with the pre-mixed masa, and added sugar, vanilla, and LOTS of cinnamon.

I don’t have a traditional tamale steaming pot (and they were $70 at the mercado!) so I used my canning pot and an inverted vegetable steamer.  Worked like a charm!

At the end of the day my freezer is overflowing is tamales and Aaron insists that they taste just like his family would make. Huzzah!

Attended a used book sale last year and picked up a vintage cookbook of United Nations recipes. Contains a lot of really cool international recipes (including from a number of countries that no longer exist!) and foreword notes to Americans encouraging them to broaden their tastebud horizons.

Friday night I made Saudi Arabian cabbage rolls from the UN book. (Actually, there were cabbage roll recipes from at least 6 countries.) Paired it with falafel balls from mix (would make from scratch next time), dill cucumber yogurt salad, and a carmelized onion – tahini spread that is a recreation of one of my favorite snacks from Arabian Breeze. I am completely in love with their veggie mezza platter. Made a very popular meal, especially the cabbage rolls!

Saturday night a friend and I paired up to make a chicken pineapple thai curry, as adapted from a curry recipe in the book. The recipe calls for us to make our own coconut milk, which was a highly entertaining experience that I am glad I tried once but will not attempt again. Broke a cleaver trying to get the coconuts open. We ground our own curry spices in our molcajete, and cut fresh pineapple for the curry. Paired it with jasmine rice steeped with whole cinnamon and cloves. Diverted enough pineapple and coconut milk to make the best damned pina coladas I’ve ever had in my life. Three and half hours to create not counting the hour or so spent wandering the aisles at Fubonn and admiring their selection of pig snout and duck feet.