Thursday
Dec112008
Tamales With A Twist
Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 11:46AM
By now Dan and Melina Durham are back across the border in Mexico, returning to the country where Melina was born. Thankfully, a day before they departed Melina passed along her grandmother's recipe for tamales with twist... molé.
I wanted to say goodbye to the two of them before they left the Northwest and probably would have showed up at their farewell fiesta in any event, but the promise of authentic tamales, carnitas, and tortilla soup sealed the deal.
The word 'authentic' linked to ethnic food typically serves as a nearly irresistible magnet for me, and Saturday night was not an exception. The soup? Great. The carnitas? Quite decent and definitely authentic... boiled slowly in nothing but lard for hours. The tamales? Addictive.
I confess that most tamales I've tried have been disappointing. They are dry. Or they are bland. Or they are both.
Not this time. Melina's grandmother solved both problems with a vein of smokey and spicy molé running through the center of each tamale along the the shredded pork. If you are not a molé fan, keep looking for your Mexican nirvana; but a great molé makes you weak in the knees, you might want to join me in a petition to the Vatican to evevate Melina's grandmother to the category of kitchen saint.
My people are in negotiations with their people for the recipe. I'm told that ultimate authenticity requrires the tamales be boiled in banana leaves rather than corn husks, but my inability to stop eating the Northwest corn-husk version suggests that this is one recipe you want in your family too... even if banana leaves are hard to come by in our neck of the woods.
I wanted to say goodbye to the two of them before they left the Northwest and probably would have showed up at their farewell fiesta in any event, but the promise of authentic tamales, carnitas, and tortilla soup sealed the deal.
The word 'authentic' linked to ethnic food typically serves as a nearly irresistible magnet for me, and Saturday night was not an exception. The soup? Great. The carnitas? Quite decent and definitely authentic... boiled slowly in nothing but lard for hours. The tamales? Addictive.
I confess that most tamales I've tried have been disappointing. They are dry. Or they are bland. Or they are both.
Not this time. Melina's grandmother solved both problems with a vein of smokey and spicy molé running through the center of each tamale along the the shredded pork. If you are not a molé fan, keep looking for your Mexican nirvana; but a great molé makes you weak in the knees, you might want to join me in a petition to the Vatican to evevate Melina's grandmother to the category of kitchen saint.
My people are in negotiations with their people for the recipe. I'm told that ultimate authenticity requrires the tamales be boiled in banana leaves rather than corn husks, but my inability to stop eating the Northwest corn-husk version suggests that this is one recipe you want in your family too... even if banana leaves are hard to come by in our neck of the woods.