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.