Everyone who hoists a cerveza to celebrate Cinco de Mayo should know a little about that historic day.
So look it up....
Ok, the Wikipedia factlet says it commemorates a victory over the French in 1862 in the Mexican state of Puebla. I think it might have been the equivalent of our Flag Day, until it was seized (metaphorically) as a marketing tool by suds shillers, etc. ....
In our household, it is tradition for me to serve tamales.
Tamales con carne is one of my favorite foods, and it's not easy to find good ones where I live. Consequently, I make them myself.
Tamales are also one of the most labor-intensive dishes ever created. Remember the illustration in your sixth-grade social studies textbook where there are a bunch of Mexican women sitting around a fire making tamales? Let me assure you they have been at it for DAYS, and there are two more shifts of women out of sight who are doing prep work and washing all the dishes.
My first challenge was finding the bottom of my kitchen counter, which was last spotted on Good Friday.
So as a pre-step 1 (Step 0?), I have to empty the trash, dishwasher, recyclables and kitchen sink so they can be refilled with all the stuff on the counter. Mission accomplished.
Next (Step 00?) is cleaning and spraying the entire kitchen after noticing that some of the black specks in our speckled countertop are actually moving. Here's a tip: Windex works well .....
Next is finding the dried corn husks I had bought three days ago. I thought for sure I'd find them somewhere in my now-spotless kitchen, if not on that counter, but alas, gotta schlep back to the store for more.
-- See what I mean about labor intensive? I'm exhausted and I haven't even started.
After my nap, I remember that earlier in the day I had lost a game of musical cars, so I had no car.
Predictably, my favorite tamale recipe is the one printed on the corn husk packaging.
But hey, I've made these many times before, I can wing this, right?
Although I am inviting guests and still have to clean, paint and redecorate the house before the guests arrive ... Ok, Ima wing it....
Next challenge, locate the rest of the ingredients. We're gonna proceed with a 90 percent success rate.
Cooking the beef filling presents no problem. Brown, add water and spices, and cook those suckers until they can be shredded by a newborn baby (not that I recommend it).
The peppers, however, can be an issue, especially if you forget a) which ones to use and b) the names of the ones you bought at the store, instead hoping for a 50 percent or greater match of memory and inventory ....
But Ok, we'll go with what we got. The only jalapeno I can find is a little moldy at the top, but, smartly donning gloves, I cut that part out. I also have some dried red California chiles, which I knowingly break open to empty maybe 1000 of the approximately 2 million --
-- right after I finished writing the above, I start to smell something burning, so I race downstairs and discover that SOMEONE had inadvertently turned the beef up to HIGH, and so the good news is my house is still standing and I salvaged about half of the beef, I hope. The bad news is I now have no beef stock for the cornmeal batter ....
... You may have expected me to have reached for a margarita by now, but I press on with untainted breath because the kids emptied the liquor cabinet long ago and I have no car to go buy more and none of my friends are answering my desperate-sounding texts or calls or emails asking if they could do me a favor ....
... Back to the peppers: Put them in water and boil those suckers until ... no that can't be right.
I KNOW with about 50 percent certainty that I saved a copy of that recipe on the corn husk packaging. I find it after only 2 hours, in my collection of recipes -- which only looks unorganized if you don't know the system -- and that time frame also includes at least 20 minutes online beforehand sifting through inferior versions of tamale recipes and checking my FB page ....
Back to the peppers: they're finally cooked and I puree them with the nifty hand-held stick mixer that Husband, who just got home, last used for some rocket science experiment and helpfully fetches and disinfects. I blend the beef with the peppers and decide the mixture doesn't taste burned, it tastes charcoaled -- more authentic anyway.
So that's the point I'm at now. Next up, after persuading Husband to run out and buy the corn husks, is rehydrating them, then making the cornmeal batter, penultimately lining the husks with batter, then beef, folding them up, then FINALLY stacking them in the wok for steaming. Here's a tip: Woks work well.
Ok, I am aware it is May 6, but that was planned because our guests had a schedule conflict. I am hoping this is the end of this particular post, everything else will go smoothly from here on in, and there will be no Part 2 to report about the rest of the menu -- because I've already found my recipes for the nachos and flan, and if you can read, you can cook -- I'm living proof of that, right?
... Gotta go do dishes.
Pass it along, and remember, it's all (c)opyrighted(c)2011(c)
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