Tamales de Picadillo

You will need:
20 squares of banana leaf (12x12 inches), steamed
40 pieces of kitchen twine or banana leaf strings
1 batch of tamale dough (scroll down for recipe)
Picadillo for filling (see previous recipe)
Bamboo or metal steamer

1. Stack banana leaves.










2. Place 2 spoonfuls of dough on the top leaf and shape it into a rough square.

3. Place a spoonful of picadillo on the left half of the dough square.













4. Bring the left and right edges of the leaf together to surround the filling with dough. Use a rolling motion to make a fat cigar shape out of the tamale.



5. Use the right edge of the leaf to scrape back any dough that has tried to escape. Fold back the leading edge and tighten the roll.


6. Secure the ends of the roll with twine/banana leaf threads.

7. Place in the steamer and repeat; tamales may be stacked in two layers. When the steamer tray is full, cover and steam for 5-10 minutes.



Dough (adapted from Maseca package):
2 C masa harina for tamales
1 t baking powder
½ t salt
2 C warm chicken broth
2/3 C lard

1. Stir together the masa harina, baking powder, and salt.

2. Add broth and mix together.

3. In a separate bowl, beat lard until fluffy. Add reconstituted masa and beat until spongy.

Slothic Picadillo

From what I can tell, picadillo originated in Cuba, although the cooking method and ingredients are very Spanish or at least Mediterranean. I made it for tamale stuffing, but you could also use it to make excellent tacos, burritos, enchiladas, and tortas. Some versions are fairly dry like a hash, while others are more soupy; this one strives to be dry enough to put into tamales but saucy enough to flavor the tamale dough. The inclusion of raisins and olives strikes some of my friends as disgusting, but after all the ingredients have simmered together for a while, the complex interplay of sweet and salty and spicy with a hint of cinnamon will reward you for your courage. This version calls for fresh tomatoes as well as tomato juice – because those are the ingredients I had on hand – but usually tomato sauce or chopped tomatoes from a can are listed in recipes published online.

¼ lb. ground beef

¾ lb. ground pork

1 T olive oil

3 small yellow onions, chopped

3 large cloves garlic, minced

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

6 plum tomatoes, chopped

½ handful raisins

10 green olives, pitted and chopped

2 pinches salt

2 T dried Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens)

1 t powdered red chili

1 T ground roasted cumin

2-inch piece of cinnamon bark, single ply

2 T of some leftover Thai chili sauce usually served with grilled pork and sticky rice

¾ C tomato juice

1. Heat olive oil over medium-high flame. Add ground meat and sauté until it starts to brown. Add salt and spices and stir for a minute.

2. Add onions and garlic and continue to sauté until onions are translucent. Stir in carrots and tomatoes and sauté until the tomatoes give off their juice. Add raisins and olives, simmer for a few minutes with the lid on.

3. Add chili sauce along with tomato juice and, after reducing the heat to low, continue to simmer, covered, for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Add salt and chili to taste.

Readers can easily adapt this recipe for personal taste. Despite my admonitions, many of you will leave out the raisins and/or olives – maybe you should just think about making chili instead? Mediterranean oregano (Origanum vulgare) can be used if you can’t find Mexican oregano, but if you can it will be worth it. Instead of the Thai dipping sauce, you can use any number of hot sauces, but I would recommend one based around chipotle, or better yet a single canned chipotle in adobo. I rate this version at about medium-spicy for gringos and probably not very spicy for Thais or anyone in the Americas who grew up eating truly spicy foods.

But whatever you do, for the love of Mike, please don’t forget to use whole cumin seeds and to roast them immediately before grinding and adding in.

Mexican-style Rice Pilaf

This dish is often called "Spanish rice," although it's no more Spanish than French fries are French. I prefer to use achiote seeds (a.k.a. annatto) for a more authentic color and flavor. If you don't have a rice cooker, you can make this in one pot on the stove. Kernels of sweet corn and/or peas can be added with or substituted for the carrot. The technique for measuring the stock along with the tomatoes might seem eccentric, but it will help make sure the rice is not too wet.

2 T olive oil (not extra-virgin!)
2 small yellow onions, diced
1 bay leaf
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 C long-grain rice
3 plum tomatoes, diced
Chicken stock (2 C minus the volume of the tomatoes)

1. Over a medium-high flame, heat oil until shimmering. Add onions and bay and saute until onions start to brown.

2. Add carrots and saute for a couple minutes. Add garlic and saute for one minute. Add rice and saute until fragrant and just starting to brown.

3. Place the chopped tomatoes in a measuring cup and add chicken broth up to the 2-cup mark. Add to the rice and bring to a boil.

4. Remove everything to a rice cooker and let it cycle. Or, slap a lid on, turn the heat down as low as possible, and leave it alone for 15 minutes.

5. Either way, fluff the rice and re-cover for five minutes before serving.

Frijoles de Olla y Pintos Refritos

1. Pick through 1/2 lb. dried pinto beans. Soak them in several inches of water for 8-24 hours.

2. Drain and rinse beans. Place in a slow cooker and add water to twice the volume of the beans. Set to high.

3. After two hours, stir the beans. Check and stir every hour until the beans are no longer hard inside (al dente is okay).

4. Add 3 generous pinches of salt and a tablespoon of ground roasted cumin. Stir and mash the beans, then simmer for another hour. If you prefer whole beans and don't intend to refry them, you can skip the mashing.

5. Reduce heat to low. Mash and stir and taste. Add more salt if desired.

6. Continue cooking until the beans are smooth and creamy. Don't forget to stir them at least once an hour. If the beans are too runny, leave the lid off for a while; if they are too thick, add some water.

7. To convert frijoles de olla into refritos, simply fry the beans in your favorite fat or oil until the beans are glossy and heated through. If you prefer not to use animal fat, olive oil (not extra-virgin; its smoking point is too low) will give a good flavor.

Slowly Making Tamales etc., Conclusion

Making tamales is a lot of work, especially when you’re new to it or out of practice. The saving graces are that it’s almost just as easy to make a lot as it is to make a little and that they hold up well to freezing and refrigeration. Reheating them with microwave or steam is a snap.

The first night I made what most people call Spanish rice, but which I’ve stubbornly named Mexican rice pilaf. After sautéing aromatics, veggies, and rice, I transferred the lot to the rice cooker along with some chicken stock. After the rice cooker popped into warming mode, I fluffed the rice and added some refrigerated tamales to the top, then pushed the button for another cook cycle. When the button popped again, the tamales were perfectly steamed and ready to eat. Meanwhile, I refried the frijoles de olla in fresh drippings from six pieces of chopped bacon. I could have use lard if I had any left, but I had used it all for the tamale dough.

The hearty simplicity of tamales with beans and rice topped with sour cream and green onion was so satisfying that I barely missed the pico de gallo I would normally have made to go with it.

For reheating the second night, I cut a new piece of banana leaf and used it to line the stovetop steamer. I placed the refrigerated rice pilaf on the leaf, added the last two tamales to the side of the steamer, cranked up the heat, and let ’er rip for about five minutes. Setting this aside, I made a new batch of refritos. The tamales and rice were every bit as fluffy and tender as if they were made that day. Both the rice cooker and the stovetop steamer were equally suited for reheating.

I guess I should mention here that my stove has only one burner, which is what most people in Thailand have. Organizing oneself to cope with cooking only one pot at a time can be challenging at times for those of us accustomed to the profligate four-burner stove, but I have found that this arrangement better suits my attention span.

Photos of this project can be viewed at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=196441&id=693824809&l=8ec8efa9eb.

That’s all for now…. Okay, no more teasing – recipes to follow.

Slowly Making Tamales etc. Part V

I’m fortunate enough to be renting a house with several banana palms in the back yard, so finding banana leaves was a lot easier than finding corn husks. No one in northern Mexico or the U.S. would use anything but corn to wrap their tamales, but please don’t try to pull the authenticity card on me – in tropical Latinoamerica, places like Guatemala and Peru, they wrap their tamales with banana leaves. I’ve eaten hundreds of things that have been steamed or grilled in banana leaves, but until now I’ve never personally tried to cook with them.

If you don't have a banana tree, the local markets will sell you a packet of leaves for almost nothing. You can also find ears of corn at the markets, but having grown up eating perfectly ripe sweet corn picked the same day, I find the stuff available here to be overripe and starchy. In other words, I'm not gonna buy a bunch of corn just to use the husk and throw the rest away. Banana leaf it will be....

Monday. First I went to the back garden, grabbed the machete, and with a few clumsy left-handed chops took down the two largest and cleanest-looking leaves from the tallest tree. Then I used a paring knife to strip the leafy parts away from the central stalk. The trickiest part was that while cutting against the grain the leaves want to split parallel with the fibers, so you have to watch out or you’ll end up with thin strips instead of wider sheets. I cut away any brown spots and washed off the cocoons and dried gecko poop. After wiping down the leaves with a clean cloth, I carefully folded the leaves and placed them in a metal steamer for several minutes. This made them more pliable and less likely to tear while handling them.

Next I made the picadillo for stuffing and then the tamale dough (recipes forthcoming).

I’m happy to run my mouth as if I were an expert on any number of subjects, but making tamale dough ain’t one of them. Instead, I’ll refer you to what looks like a great recipe: http://www.fronterakitchens.com/cooking/recipes/recipe_porktamales.html; as far as it goes for gringos cooking Mexican food, I can’t think of anyone more credible than Rick Bayless. I ended up with 2/3 C of lard, so I was shooting for a half recipe. Then I discovered a different and more straightforward recipe on the side of the masa harina bag, which is the one I ended up using.

With fingers like sausages, my strong suit isn’t stuffing and rolling things like dumplings and tamales, so they always turn out looking pretty rough. In the trade, the euphemism used for inexpertly shaped food is “rustic.” As I progressed with stuffing my rustic tamales, I experimented with different techniques for rolling – with the grain of the leaf, against the grain, using various amounts of filling – but I never seized on a single best approach. Could be I was too hungry to think straight.

I steamed two panfuls of tamales. The first batch I rolled without tying off the ends, so the tamales turned out a bit too soft and wet. For the next batch I used thin strings torn from leftover banana leaves to secure the ends. As I had hoped, this second batch turned out moist and light and fluffy. Despite the dark color of the lard, the dough tasted rich and savory without overpowering the whole. The complex seasoning of the stuffing still shined through the hearty flavor of the dough, but in the future I will season the stuffing even more aggressively.

Because I was so damned hungry and because the steamer was pumping out such a great smell, I ate five or six of the tamales without bothering to make the beans ’n’ rice that would comprise the next day’s feast.

Slowly Making Tamales etc., Part IV

If you want your tamales to be light and fluffy and to taste right, you must use lard. Sorry, it’s not my fault, it’s just a fact of nature, and there’s nothing you can do about it but kick back and render up some hog fat. Because the local Thai pork is raised more naturally and from fattier breeds than we would find in the States, I’m expecting to end up with especially tasty lard. This might strike some of you as a contradiction in terms, but I implore you to challenge yourself to rise above society’s bias and to accept lard as a necessary ingredient for some dishes, albeit one that ought not to be used every day.

Fresh animal products in Thailand are particularly delicious. The tiny chickens have a rich flavor belying their bantam size. The beef cuts may not be as tender as their American counterparts, but all the more justification for slow-cooking some top round for the most succulent country-style steaks I’ve ever tried. There’s also a sun-dried beef product that’s more moist and perishable than American-style jerky; it’s savory if a little gamey and a good snacking match when sipping beer on the rocks. But for my money, the best meat in Thailand is the pork, which tends to be well-marbled, tender and full-flavored, as opposed to those quick-drying, low-fat loin cuts we find packaged in the States. If a Thai pork chop is tastier than the American version, I’m hoping for similar results from the lard.

In the past, I’ve made my own lard from the long strips of backfat my Hawaiian in-laws let me take after helping out with the annual luau. On a wimpy American stove, rendering is not big deal as long as you’re patient with the low heat, but as mentioned in Part I my ferocious Thai stove will not oblige the use of this method. Enter the slow-cooker. I’ve never tried to make lard in a slow-cooker before, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more it seems the perfect method.

One more consideration when home-rendering lard is what you intend to use it for. If you’re going to make a flaky crust for a fruit pie, you want white lard. If you want to make tamales or refritos, you want your lard to be light golden brown. The difference is in how long it cooks: the longer you render, the darker the lard; the darker the lard, the more flavorful it becomes. In any case, even the white lard you make at home will probably look better than the ghastly pasty white found in highly processed supermarket lard.

Sunday. Moved the beans to the fridge, set the crock to soak for easier cleaning. During yesterday’s trip to the megamart, I procured a small sheet of fresh pork fat for about fifty cents. Right after waking up today, I put the package in the freezer to get firm, had a cup of coffee, then washed a molehill of dishes including the crock. The pork fat was now a little more solid and that much easier to cube. Again using the crock’s high setting, I started to render the cubed pork fat at about 10 am.

I Skyped the Momster and had another cup of coffee. By noon, the pieces of fat were bubbling away, submerged in their own liquid lard. I stirred it up to separate the pieces and turned the heat setting on the slow-cooker to low. Then off to the market for some more filling ingredients. Then off to the lake to soak up some rays and some beers. Then to the hospital for a check-up on my shoulder.

When I returned home around 7 pm, the white fat had changed to golden brown cracklings. After straining the liquid through a sieve, I’m thinking the color might be a little too dark, and I’m a bit concerned that the flavor will be too strong. But tomorrow will be a busy cooking day, so rather than waste more time getting to the market and rendering a new batch, I’m going to bed so I can forge ahead in the morning.

Slowly Making Tamales in Thailand with One and a Half Arms, Part III

Saturday. While waking up in the late morning, I drained and rinsed the pinto beans, put them into a crockpot, and filled it to the top with water. With the crockpot covered on high heat, I made a pot of chai masala and started working on organizing the 1500+ pictures of my students I've been taking over the last three weeks. After a couple hours I stirred the beans and found they were still hard - no worries, mate, good food takes time.

Frijoles de olla is one of the simplest and yet most satisfying contributions to world cuisine, and preparing them in the crockpot is pretty much no-fail. However, past experience has shown that if you’re lazy about scraping beans off the sides of the pot during the occasional stir, they will eventually stick and char a little, especially on the high setting. But not to worry - even while drinking beer and getting lost in the virtual world, your senses will remind you that it's time to stir. Beans are attention-starved little bitches sometimes: hey, smell me; hey, listen to me bubbling and farting away; hey, where's the chips 'n' salsa? Stirring the beans about once an hour will ensure a smoother consistency and more even cooking.

When the beans got mostly tender, after about 5 hours, I added three generous pinches of salt and ½ tablespoon of ground roasted cumin. I mashed some of the beans and let it simmer for another hour. Time for a taste: the bean juice was almost salty enough, but the beans themselves not nearly so. I added another 2 large pinches of salt, then mashed away. As I stirred, the smell of the beans was making my mouth water, so I decided to go out for dinner and shopping; while I was gone I left the lid off the crock so the beans would thicken up.

First stop was Carrefour, the megamart about a 20-minute walk from my house. They tend to have good prices on supermarket items such as sugar, chips, vodka, and boxed juice. Before the surgery, when I could still ride the motorcycle, I preferred to buy my fresh meat and vegetables from the local markets, but now that I’m on foot even the closest fresh market is difficult to get to.

Behind Carrefour’s parking lot, on Fridays and Saturdays a vibrant night market jams the back streets. In addition to six blocks of stalls selling shoes, clothing, toys, and electronics, there are two blocks of food stalls. Sadly, I found that the “turtle egg” vendor (see Part II) had already left or simply wasn’t there. But I still found plenty to eat: a small bag of fried chicken rinds (like pork rinds but made with chicken skin) to be dipped in namprik num (a spicy eggplant dip); spicy sausage salad; grilled pork with sticky rice; an ice-cold can of Leo beer, which rapidly warmed to spit-temperature as I tried to drink it down; and a novel presentation of the classic Thai soup known as gaeng juet or dtom juet (“plain soup”).

I’ve been coming to this market once or twice a month since I moved to the neighborhood last June. As well as I think I know all that it has to offer, I still manage to discover new dishes there. The “plain soup” is one of the few Thai food items that don’t scorch a delicate foreigner’s mouth with spice; Thais love it because it so successfully compliments rich and spicy curries. It’s one of the dishes I like to prepare alongside panang curry for my show-off menu. Usually it features chunks of soft egg-tofu or small meatballs, sometimes mushrooms and bean thread noodles, almost always a combination of carrot and cabbage. I had never before seen the version I found this night. In addition to the expected carrots and cabbage, this soup had strips of blade-cut pork with a crowning jewel: a whole small cabbage head hollowed out and filled with seasoned ground pork.

When I got back home two hours after leaving, the beans had cooked to the perfect consistency for my taste, that is thick and creamy. I turned off the heat, slapped the lid back on, had a couple cocktails and went to bed ready to dream of the next steps….

Slowly Making Tamales in Thailand with One and a Half Arms, Part II

Six weeks after shoulder surgery, I can use my right hand for light duty, but nothing more demanding than slicing veggies or washing dishes. I can scratch my face and my groin but not my head. I haven’t been cooking much lately, which hasn’t been as difficult as I expected – if there’s any place in the world to live without a kitchen, it’s Thailand.

There are thousands of food stalls and dozens of fresh markets in Chiang Mai alone, and my walks to and from work take me past an array of options that makes me drool just thinking about it: fried chicken, fried bananas, fresh-cut fruit, grilled chicken and pork and squid, noodle soups, hanging ducks, stewed pork leg, oyster omelets, sweet iced tea and coffee, and a newly discovered favorite translated as “turtle egg” or some kind of “bird egg,” which is a fried ball of semi-sweet dough that’s crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Almost as ubiquitous as the food stalls are small family-run restaurants offering both made-to-order and steam-table dishes; for about a buck a person you can have a nice lunch of fried noodles or green curry or pad gra pao on rice. And I finally figured out how to order online a pizza for delivery. All of which means I’ve been perfectly content to let others do the cooking for me.

However, the desire not to waste the dry goods I have left, coupled with the increasing need for physical activity, has drawn me back to the kitchen to whip up more exotic fare. More than any other cuisine, I’ve missed Mexican-style food the most. Although Chiang Mai has a couple Mexican restaurants with adequate Mexlike dishes (www.miguels-cafe.com and www.thesalsakitchen.com), they tend to be overpriced and not nearly as delicious as what I can make for myself. As mentioned in Part I, that sack of masa harina is calling to me: ¡Ey, gringo, hágate tamales pronto!

In Part I, I mentioned the slow-cooker, which behind the hot-water pump and the toaster oven is the kitchen appliance I use the most. Slow cooking with an electric slow-cooker should not be confused with the “slow cooking” advocated by the Slow Food movement, founded on the idea that good food and “fast food” are all too often mutually exclusive. Being under-employed by American standards, I’ve had the luxury in Thailand of taking my own sweet time when I cook and of having time to think about How Slow Food Can Save the World from Itself. Ultimately I have found that Slow Cooking is a lifestyle choice, one I will be loathe to give up when I come back to the States in May. Anyway, I like to think of myself as a Slow Cook who enjoys using the slow-cooker….

The tamale feast I have planned will be four days in the making.

Friday. Before my 45-minute walk to work, I picked through ½ pound dried pinto beans, removed a molar-crushing pebble, and covered the beans in several inches of water. Man, that was hard.

Slowly Making Tamales in Thailand with One and a Half Arms, Part I

After a long hiatus from any kind of writing, and an even longer break from weblogging, I’ve decided to come back for a few days. I can’t write a travelogue because I’m not really traveling, and I know everyone gets tired of hearing about other people’s daily routines. So what you’re looking at is partly a cooking journal and partly a last-ditch effort to describe this ex-pat’s lifestyle. This type of cooking project is what passes for adventure these days. I have set out to make a tamale feast as authentically as I can, taking as much time as I need to, savoring some final idle days as the number of my weeks in Thailand dwindles toward single-digits.

I need to start using up the dry goods in the cupboard. One of these items is a sack of masa harina for tamales, which I brought here from my last visit to the States.

Some notes about using the slow cooker…. Mine is an Imarflex brand, so I shouldn’t properly call it a “Crockpot,” although I probably will out of habit. The stoves in Thailand are almost always run on propane. The one I have delivers a mighty jet of flame, which is great if you want to boil a pot of water or stir-fry a dish, but not so great for slow-cooking. On the lower settings, the flame is still hot enough to scorch a pot of beans, or else it gets so low that it gutters out. The solution is the electric slow cooker.

Known throughout the world as a convenient appliance for the working family, a slow cooker allows us to toss in a hunk of meat and some seasonings, slog off to work, and eventually return home to a savory-smelling home and a hot meal. Since I moved to Thailand, I don’t have to rush around so much, so for me the slow cooker justifies my aimlessly dicking around the house all day because I can surf the internet, listen to music, drink beer, and still say I’m cooking.

There are already hundreds of thousands of recipes for the slow-cooker, so I don’t pretend that I will contribute much in that area. Instead, I would ask you to consider this limited series of weblog entries as a description of the good life, or at least a version of the good life. This is a siren’s call to my wage-slave friends, to opt-out from the rat race, to sell off your house and your car and if necessary your children, and to abandon yourself to the temptation of sloth, the easiest of all the deadly sins….