Here today, gone tamale

I had a wild hair and two days in a row off of work. And so yep, I made pork tamales!! Holy cow what a load of work. Was it worth it? Perhaps. Are they good? I did good.

I was all excited to post step-by-step instructions and the recipe but I found one already pretty perfect. So, I'm just adding my own tips. I'd highly recommend this page for instructions, pictures and accurate measurements. http://www.makingtamales.com/cook.html. I wish I had found it long ago... or even this time. You see I didn't see it until just now. Big bummer! But we must move on...BEWARE though- many sites will give you bunk information and set you up for failure. This one is pretty right on the money.

However, if you're making a big batch (which you should because it takes just as long to make 100 as it does 5)use lard (Tip #1). You know what? The taste is distinctive and I feel like its too important and you work waaaay too hard on these to use oil and have them be just so-so. You need the full robust flavor that lard brings. Saturated fat is high yes, but not as much as butter. And unlike many margarines and vegetable oils, lard does not contain any trans fat. Besides, these are special treats, they're small and you're not going to eat 100 of them.

Tip #2: I used 10ounces of lard rather than a full two cups.

Tip #3: After you season your meat, add a little olive oil and stock to moisten the meat and warm the spices.

Tip #4: Overspice the meat. After steaming it loses a lot of flavor and there is nothing worse than a bland tamale. If you get a second wild hair, make your own pepper sauce with your choice of peppers - it's fun!






Tip #5: Don't be ridiculous and tie each one of your tamales up in string or thin pieces of husk. Just fold the husk over! Jeez.




Tip #6: Add the 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder to the dried masa. The lighter texture makes them feel more gourmet.

Tip #7: Try not to make tamales like my Aunt Betty. Bless her heart, she was a fine woman and she was always very sweet to me. But she made one sad sack tamale. I think the aunts would take turns making them during holidays. Even as a young girl I had deep regret when it was Betty's turn. Hers were too thick, had too much masa, not enough meat, they were dry, the masa didn't have any flavor or salt and her meat was gray and tasteless. Nothing worse than being so excited to eat a tamale and unwrapping the little gift only to find its lifeless body. But I'm proud to say we were resourceful, hungry, poor, Catholics and so we'd drench them with ketchup, salt and vinegar and they went down just fine. Betty was none the wiser.

Gyros in the making

When I was really young, before my parents bought their restaurant, much of the food we had at home was super good peasant-like Mexican food. It was very rustic and hearty but serious flavors. The dishes had names usually but for a lot of reasons (my memory is poor, my dad can't hear me on the phone anymore, my mom can't remember now that she was an amazing cook or who I am, I never learned to speak Spanish, etc), I have to recreate much by taste and visual memory.



When you're super young you don't think about what other people are eating at their house but when I got a bit older and started to venture out more, I started to notice that we were eating food from some other planet over at mine. I mean, this was in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 60's and 70's (see sample photo of a street near mine).

My mom grew up outside of Chicago but learned to cook when she met my dad from his mother Eloise. These were dishes from Northeast Mexico in the foothills of Monterrey.

My grandma stayed with us for awhile and from what I recall she loved to eat, she loved to drink beer and she was always laughing. She was shaped like an egg with little skinny legs and arms and always wore an apron over a faded cotton house dress. Her nylons rolled down like knee socks. She didn't love kids or me, like you imagine grandmothers. She liked sending me to Hep's Dairy up the hill for 7-up and spaghetti and to fetch her cold beers while she propped up her skinny legs and watched soap operas. She was cool though and I liked her a lot.




The stuff she taught my mom to make wasn't tacos and burritos but stuff like chicken with zucchini and corn cooked in a casserole with Spanish rice, ground beef in a broth with big chunks of potatoes and fresh tortillas to sop it up. She made a delicate chicken soup with cabbage and vinegar that was out of this world.

So anyway, then, I started to see that if I got a little creative, I could see similarities in the meals my friends folks made. They were using chicken and ground beef, they were eating potatoes...it was just all put together different.

You really don't want to be different when your little. Too bad. Now I see all the greatness of it, of my grandmother, of my mom, of the food.

I started to see how any dish could have a Mexican slant to it or be recreated with Latin flavors. But this was NOT like when my dad put all his white southern waitresses in peasant skirts and blouses. THAT was awkward. No, this is fun and just how I've seen food all my life. Same ingredients mostly but just with little sombreros on them.



I took some of that turkey last night and cut it up and spiced it with some of the fresh chipotle chili powder I made and sauteed it up for some Mexican inspired Gyro pitas. The turkey just soaked up that heat. I added a little cayenne & Mexican oregano to the yogurt dill sauce - Wow! I kept the tomato and onion and added lime juice. This was a hit!

Breakfast Melt

Any self respecting 'mate' knows the melting points of their partner. P wakes up way too early and then has to eat two hours later or 3 cups of coffee later, whichever comes first. That's not 'get ready and think about where we'd like to go' two hours, that's sittin' at the table already ordered with the food comin' two hours. If we get delayed, he gets less and less charming with each moment. And that's a big understatement. So, its really in my best interest to find that breakfast spot. I've also thought about darting him with a blow gun like the good tribesmen do. Maybe a mild sedative, just enough to put him down for an hour or so whilst I get myself ready.


There are so many amazing places for breakfast or brunch that we need to try but its a little rough to pull the trigger on a brand new place. I struggle with wanting tried and true versus something unknown and there is always a gamble. Breakfast is our one time to sit and enjoy each other and chat and relax. What if the new place feels dead and sad? What if its not comfortable inside? What if its too loud or even worse, really quiet?? There's all this unknown to a new place. What if the food is mediocre but the place we knew would have been great!? It's a gamble I tell ya.

So Sunday, I had to go with the tried and true, Pequena, but with one condition, that I try something different. We both got the Cast Iron Pans, both 'A' & 'B', Potatoes with onions and peppers, and topped with two fried eggs, add chorizo/bacon.

They didn't come in the black skillet but it was pretty good, rustic, hearty. I think there is really something to being a consistently good cook. I'm not. I strive for it but I'm 50/50 if even that. Pequena is mostly really good, sometimes mouth-watering wanna kiss the cook great and then other times, like this time, ...eh.

But its like a good musician. I will go see someone who has been amazing just once, in the hopes of catching that magic again, even if it means seeing a few mediocre shows.

Mexican breakfasts....ahhh (sigh)

Mexican breakfasts are big and bold and right up my alley. We have Pequena Restaurant right around the corner that serves the best chicken chilaquiles on this planet! They have a salsa verde and you can get two fried eggs on top, which is almost too much food (but is there really such a thing???). I'll get a picture next time I'm there. I make mine (chilaquiles) differently with the egg tossed around the chips but I am there only to worship and devour their dish, not get technical.

So, my dad used to make the most delicious eggs rancheros but with summer sausage of all things. He made his own quick-style tomato ranchero sauce with peppers, onions and garlic and it was tangy and spicy and so so good to sop up that sauce with my mom's freshly made flour tortillas. But I'm trying not to eat summer sausage because it has so much fat (but man is it worth it actually, thinking about it now....) So, I made steak & eggs ranchero with torts and I sorta loved it, although if I coulda got a better grill on those steak slices, I think it could of been better. I used a $2 sandwich steak though so come 'on! I like heat so I added chili powder, cumin and some cayenne to my tomato, onion, garlic base. If I would have had fresh jalapenos, I would have added those.

I think the key though was deglazing that ding-dang hot grill pan that I made the steak on to get that flavor into the sauce.

Served it along with some canned black beans with a little jalapeno jack cheese and pickled jalapeno peppers.

posole for the soul-y

I think posole might have some of the same healing elements that menudo has so I'm thinking it might not be as much about the tripe as I had once thought. But I am making my posole now with chicken thighs since they seem to be the only meat I can afford. I start by making like a chicken broth with celery, onion, garlic, bay leaves, jalapenos and peppercorns. That broth is enriched with a smoked pork neck or turkey neck. The rich, (real)broth being seasoned with chili powder and cumin, cayenne might be key I guess.

Everything about menudo was a little mysterious and magical growing up actually. When I was little and to about my early-teens my mom & dad would take us to the mexican dances at these mysterious 'halls' in surrounding small towns in Ohio and Indiana. The live bands were happening and there was always plenty of alcohol in little plastic cups around to make it easy to get into another mind-set and lose track of time in these unfamiliar landscapes. Everyone would dance and they would break up the tex-mex country type sound with rock and roll for the kids and we'd have our moment on the floor to show our stuff. I had some James Brown moves as a really small kid that I myself thought were pretty right on the money. Later it became about the fabulous dresses and shoes I'd debut at these events. Then I sorta drifted into a way different scene and the two worlds really couldn't meld, so I quit going altogether BUT the MAIN event really was the 'after' dance drunken ride back to Fort Wayne with my dad at the wheel and the only thing that mattered was that we were gonna get to eat some really good menudo. He could always get us there even though I remember it was sort of a death ride of chance. And the place we'd eat it was not nice, it was all about the soup. It was a truck stop area of town near the slaughter house so the smell of old blood alerted my drunken head we were nearing this miracle soup.

So menudo is supposed to cure hangovers and prevent them. I think it works. But it may do even more than that and I'm trying to figure out if posole also shares some of this magical power. There's something soothing about soup in general right but that's not all. It calms the soul sort of instantly and then you start to have a feeling of being back in the womb or some shit. I've never had tripe in anything else, so I just assumed it must be something about that weird cut of stomach lining that slides down your throat that may hold some relief that you haven't drank all the lining out of your own stomach. But maybe its the broth, the combo of spices with the chili that can soothe the soul.

Menudo is like the chuppacabra though in Brooklyn, you hear about it but never actually see it. Maybe someone will have it on their menu but no one ever has it available. I have to make my own soon.

Until then, I think posole is really its healthier (although tripe is not bad for you as far as I can tell) less time consuming cute cousin that can do the job almost as well.