Every year I make tamales for Christmas Eve. Lots of them. This year I decided to try some new recipes just to keep things interesting. While perusing my cookbooks I found Tamales by Alice Guadalupe Tapp. I'm pretty sure I bought it like three years and promptly forgot about it.
I decided to make two recipes: Chicken-Chorizo Tamales and Pasilla Rajas Tamales.
I started out by making the fillings for both tamales. The nice thing about tamale fillings is that you can easily make them a day or so ahead and keep them in the fridge for later assembly. It's a nice way to take some of the stress out of the process.
Once the fillings were done and chilled it was time for assembly. I set up Netflix on my iPad and prepared to spend the next hour or three with my hands covered in masa. (I'm fortunate enough to have pretty easy access to fresh masa, so mixing it up for tamales is a snap. If you don't have access to fresh masa the dried stuff is just fine.)
After assembly I let the tamales chill in the fridge overnight. There's no culinary reason to do so, I just find doing the entire process in one day a bit daunting and like to break it up.
The next day I steamed them, about an hour per batch. The rajas filling got wrapped in corn husks and the meat filling got wrapped in banana leaves. I love the flavor banana leaves give a tamale and the chorizo filling is strong enough to be complimented but not overwhelmed. The rajas has a few more subtle flavors so I went with the more neutral corn husks.
And now we're off to Christmas Eve dinner with tamales in hand and a fridge full of leftover filling. Pro-tip: leftover tamale filling can be dumped onto a big pile of beans or rice and become an instant meal. My post-Christmas work lunches are often just that.
I started out by making the fillings for both tamales. The nice thing about tamale fillings is that you can easily make them a day or so ahead and keep them in the fridge for later assembly. It's a nice way to take some of the stress out of the process.
I made the chicken-chorizo filling first. It was very, very easy. Chorizo has such a strong flavor that it doesn't need a whole to make it delicious. I subbed in ground turkey for the ground chicken - it's cheaper and just as tasty, particularly in a recipe like this where it's just filler. The mix came out super tasty.
While the turkey-chorizo mix was on the stove I set the chiles to roasting under the broiler. The recipe calls for pasilla chiles which are pretty much the same as poblanos - which name you find them under depends on your region.
Once the chiles were roasted they had to be seeded, deveined, and chopped into strips along with onion, tomatoes, and garlic.
That mix got sauteed on the stove until the flavors melded. Then they got chucked into a bowl with a mix of Mexican cheese and set aside to let the cheese melt. In a more traditional rajas the cheese would be replaced by crema, but the cheese gives the mix enough viscosity to hold together as a filling.
Once the fillings were done and chilled it was time for assembly. I set up Netflix on my iPad and prepared to spend the next hour or three with my hands covered in masa. (I'm fortunate enough to have pretty easy access to fresh masa, so mixing it up for tamales is a snap. If you don't have access to fresh masa the dried stuff is just fine.)
After assembly I let the tamales chill in the fridge overnight. There's no culinary reason to do so, I just find doing the entire process in one day a bit daunting and like to break it up.
The next day I steamed them, about an hour per batch. The rajas filling got wrapped in corn husks and the meat filling got wrapped in banana leaves. I love the flavor banana leaves give a tamale and the chorizo filling is strong enough to be complimented but not overwhelmed. The rajas has a few more subtle flavors so I went with the more neutral corn husks.
And now we're off to Christmas Eve dinner with tamales in hand and a fridge full of leftover filling. Pro-tip: leftover tamale filling can be dumped onto a big pile of beans or rice and become an instant meal. My post-Christmas work lunches are often just that.
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