Add to: Recipe Box | Grocery List | Meal PlannerRecipe submitted by
eno95, 04/15/08
Eno's TamalesIngredients (use vegan versions): corn husks dipped in water for a bit (2 husks per tamale)
Filling:
1 lb minced cremini mushrooms
1 minced onion
1 minced green bell pepper
3 minced cloves garlic
1 lb corn, but probably less
black beans, somewhat mashed, roughly 10 oz give or take a few
cumin, oregano, thyme, red chili flakes to taste
Goya Adobo to taste; contains salt, garlic, black pepper, oregano, turmeric.
some cooked rice, a couple cups or so or as much as you want
Dough:
stock, as described above
1/2 4lb bag of Maseca
3 tablespoons paprika (I used about
1.5 tablespoons as I ran out)
3 tablespoons salt *
1 tablespoon cumin
Goya adobo to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste
2 cups corn oil
Directions:* Looking back, using this much salt AND adobo seems like a bit much, although the tamales were not salty. Still, Try maybe with 2 tablespoons salt first and adjust later if you like.
I made some tamales using a filling someone made up on the spot and masa (dough) recipe I adapted from a non-vegan recipe on a tamales site. It turned out pretty good so I will try to describe what I did.
Filling:
First I made the filling for the tamales.
Heat up some oil in a pan and saute the mushrooms. Add cumin, oregano, thyme and adobo to the mushrooms and cook until most of the water has evaporated.
In a separate pan, heat up some oil and add onions, peppers, red chili flakes, cumin and adobo. Saute for a bit and then add garlic and cook for a little longer. Then, add the corn, mashed black beans and rice. Cook until it becomes fairly dry, thick and pasty. Combine with the mushrooms and cook a bit longer if you like; you want the mixture to be somewhat dry and thick.
Scoop the mixture into a bowl, leaving the residue of the mixture behind in the pans. Add water to the pans with the mixture residue and bring to a boil. This will be the stock for the tamale dough.
Dough:
Now the tamale stuffing and stock for the dough are done. Now it is time to make the tamale dough.
Get a very large bowl and add dry ingredients: maseca, paprika, salt, cumin, adobo, cayenne pepper. Mix well. Now mix in the corn oil and add start mixing in the stock. The consistency of my dough was actually surprisingly moist. The site I got it from said to use a consistency of thick peanut butter, but my dough I think was a bit more moist than that, but only slightly. It gets firmer when you cook it. Anyway, mix until you think you have a good consistency.
Make the tamales:
Now it's time to make the tamales. By the way, this makes a lot. I had to freeze half of it. Get a huge deep pot. One of those really huge ones. Fill it with water and set to high (add salt and oil too); while you're waiting for it to boil you can prepare the tamales.
Each tamale requires two corn husks. One corn husk goes on top of another, such that there is a middle section which overlaps; the wider end of each husk should be overlapping while the slimmer ends of the husks should be on either end. You're sort of trying to use two corn husks to form one longer one. Scoop some of the dough over the overlapping middle section of your combined corn husks. Scoop some of the stuffing on the top and center of the dough.
Now to close the tamale, fold the wide ends on top of the dough and then fold the narrow ends on top of that.
Now you need to tie it shut. We make the strings to tie the tamales shut from the corn husks themselves. Get another husk and strip off a piece, about an inch wide or so. Tie a knot at the bottom of one of the ends. At the other end, strip it in half until you get to the knot; the knot holds the piece together. Here's a graphical representation of what we're aiming for; you need a fixed width font for it to display properly.
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* <-- Knot
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Now simply get two of these per tamale and tie them shut. So keep doing this until you think you have enough.
By this point the water should be boiling, so add the tamales to the water and cook. Not sure how long ... I suggest sampling one of them after about an hour to see if it's done, i.e. so it's firm enough to eat it with a fork.
