I brought home tamal flour from Peru. I think it might be legal. No one told me it wasn’t. It’s ground white maize mostly. It’s a rough grind and it’s not as sweet as corn up here, so it’d be pretty hard to reproduce and probably very expensive to find the proper corn. You can, however, probably find the same flour up here, but for a lot more money. So I bought a pound of it in Peru and flew it on up here to Montreal.
And I finally made tamalitos. In Peru you see a lot of green ones where a bunch of lard or oil is combined with the ground maize flour and then a bunch of blended cilantro is added. It’s mostly for colour but it also has a little flavour, though the hour and a half cooking time (SO unnecessary!) destroys that, as well as any nutrient benefit the green may have had before it got the life boiled out of it.
I didn’t have cilantro, but I had a ton of basil from Lufa Farms in Montreal, so I blended that up and hoped it wouldn’t be too strong. I also skipped the lard, and just used a tbsp of sunflower oil. I recycled a banana leaf from a Mexican tamale I bought at a weekend festival in the Old Port, wrapped it up with rubber bands, and boiled it instead of steaming. Some recipes say boil, some say steam. Boiling is faster and the banana leaf acts as a pretty tight seal.
This is a picture of the dish from Peru. It’s usually served for breakfast or as an appetizer for lunch with “onion sauce” – generally, quick-pickled onions, but this version had some hot reduced juices on it. Probably pork-related. I didn’t ask and I didn’t want to know. Normally it’s also stuffed with a lone strip of chicken. I had a lone strip of smoked haddock left over, so that went in instead. Great idea since the salt infused the rest of the tamalito.
Green Tamalito
Ingredients (makes two tamalitos, but serves four easily):
1 cup tamale flour (made from a different kind of corn than the sweet North American variety, so look for the flour in a LAtin American grocery)
3 tbsp water
6 basil leaves (or about 1/4 cup un-chopped cilantro)
1 tbsp oil
1/4 tsp salt
2 small strips of smoked haddock
2 pieces of banana leaf
2 rubber bands (or two ribbon-like strips of banana leaf to tie the tamalito closed)
Directions:
This is so easy. In a small food processor or blender or coffee grinder combine the washed basil (or cilantro) with the water and oil.
In a medium bowl combine the tamale flour with the salt and then add the green water mixture. Stir to combine and the spread one quarter of the mixture in each banana leaf lengthwise. Place a strip of haddock in the middle of the flour mixture and top with another quarter of the flour. Fold in the sides of the banana leaf and then fold it lengthwise to completely enclose the filling. You may need a second banana leaf for each to make sure they’re pretty waterproof.
Tie the ends with rubber bands and toss into boiling water for about 20 minutes. Corn doesn’t take a long time to cook and neither does boiling flour. 20 minutes was more than enough. Besides, the fish wasn’t getting any less cooked.
Either pickle some onions strips using this recipe:
- 1 red onion, sliced as fine as possible
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp diced red chili pepper, seeded
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- 1 sprig of cilantro or parsley, finely chopped
- Juice of 1 lime
- pinch of salt
Directions: Combine. Simple.
Or serve with hot sauce or something you enjoy. Could be absolutely anything. Most North Americans would probably go with ketchup but that would make me cry a little.
Leave a Reply