Tamale
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- For the city in Ghana, see Tamale, Ghana.
A tamale or tamal (from Nahuatl tamalli) is a traditional Latin American food consisting of steam-cooked corn meal dough with or without a filling. Tamales can be filled with meats, cheese (post-colonial), and sliced chiles or any preparation according to taste. The tamal is generally wrapped in a corn husk before cooking.
Tamales have been made throughout the American continent for over 5000 years. Their essence is the corn meal dough (called masa), or a masa mix such as Maseca, usually filled with a sweet or savory filling, wrapped in plant leaves or corn husks, and cooked, usually by steaming, until firm. Tamales were developed as a portable ration for use by war parties in the ancient Americas, and were as ubiquitous and varied as the sandwich is today.
The procedure to make tamales in Central and Northern Mexico goes as follows: A ball of masa about one-inch in diameter is spread, like butter, on the individual corn husk with a spoon. Then the filling (see below) is placed length-wise on the center of the husk; meats (chicken, pork) should be pre-cooked. The sides of the husk are folded and the newly made tamal is steam-cooked for an hour or until the masa has a cake-like consistency. The proportions of filling and masa vary widely according to taste. Once made, they can be frozen quite easily (the husks help to keep them from sticking together) and reheated as needed. Because of this, the making of tamales is often a social occasion, with friends and family all pitching in to help make hundreds of tamales to be shared out.
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[edit] Tamales in Latin America
Tamales are a favorite quick breakfast dish in Mexico, where street vendors can be seen serving them from huge, steaming, covered pots (tamaleras). In some places like Zacatecas, the tamale is often placed inside a wheat bread roll to form a torta de tamal, which is substantial enough to keep the breakfaster going until Mexico's traditionally late lunch hour.
The most common (and traditional) filling is pork or chicken, in either red or green salsa or mole. Another very traditional variation is to add sugar to the corn mix and fill it with raisins or other dried fruit and make a sweet tamal (tamal de dulce). Instead of corn husks, banana leaves are used in tropical parts of the country such as the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and the Yucatán Peninsula. These tamales are rather square in shape, often very large (15 inches or more) and thick; a local name for these in Southern Tamaulipas is zacahuil. To the south, banana-leaf tamales are also common in the neighboring countries of Central America.
To make a full meal, the tamal is often accompanied by atole, hot chocolate, or champurrado. In El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia they are wrapped in plantain leaves, and there are several varieties, including tamal de gallina, tamal pisque, and tamal de elote. They are generally large, similar in size to the tamales of southeastern Mexico.
In Guatemala, in addition to the El Salvador versions, there are tamales without filling which are served as the bread or starch portion of a meal:
- Tamale de elote (made with yellow corn, sometimes with a sweet taste)
- Tamalito de chipilin (made with Chipilin, a green leaf)
- Tamale blanco (simple, made with white corn)
During Christmas holidays, tamales of rice flour are a special treat for Guatemalans. The preparation time of this type of tamal is long, due to the amount of time required to cook down and thicken the rice flour base.
Corn-husk wrapped tamales are also popular in southeastern Cuba.
Peruvian tamales tend to be spicy, larger, and are wrapped in banana leaves. Common fillings are chicken or pork, usually accompanied by boiled eggs, olives, peanuts or a piece of chilli pepper mainly in Lima, the capital city.. In other cities tamales are smaller and wrapped in corn husks. They differ from the tamales made in Lima in that they use white corn instead of yellow corn as people in Lima do. A dessert is also made out of white corn. It can be salted or sweet but it has dried grapes, vanilla, oil, sugar (or salt) and are cooked in the oven or in the pachamanca. They are called humitas.
Tamales are also found in Colombia, where there are several varieties (including boyacense and santandereano). Ecuador also has a variety of tamales and humitas, they can be filled with fresh cheese, pork, chicken or raisins. Ecuadorian tamales are usually wrapped in corn husk or achira (aka Canna) leaves.
[edit] Tamales in the United States
The plural is tamales, and this is the form of the word most often seen in the United States among Hispanics, with the singular frequently given as tamale (incorrect to Spanish-speakers, who use the correct form tamal). As tamales have acquired mainstream popularity in the United States, other fillings have become more common, such as beef; another popular filling is corn (partially mashed, like creamed corn). Tamales are popular as Christmas meals in the southwestern states of the United States. A basic modern southwestern tamal contains a spicy meat filling, usually shredded pork or beef, and is often served with a chili con carne sauce.
The green corn tamal (green, meaning "fresh") is made with fresh white corn, often mixed with cheese, then lined with a long green chile slice before it is rolled and wrapped in a husk. Then the husks are steamed. Tucson, Arizona, claims to be the originator of this tamal, and its popularity extends to southern California.
The tamal is a staple food along the Mississippi Delta. It grew in popularity in the early 1900s when Mexican farmworkers introduced it to black workers in the cotton fields in the deep South.
Tamales have taken on a new direction in recent years as the Nuevo Latino and New World chefs from Alta California (Rick Bayless) and Florida bring new diversity to this ancient food.
[edit] Tamales in the Caribbean
The tamal is also a staple in Belize, where it is also known (in English) by the Spanish name bollo. Confusion with the nomenclature also leads to the plural form being used as a singular: thus, "a tamales" [rare].
Another variation of the tamal is the pastelle found on the island of Trinidad and Tobago.It is a Spanish derivative left over from the days when Trinidad was a colony of Spain and thus shares many similarities with its Latin American counterparts. Pastelles are wrapped in banana leaves for cooking and have a rectangular shape, roughly about 6"x3"x1/2" in dimensions varying according to preference. The shell is made of cornmeal and the filling commonly consists of well seasoned ground beef occasionally substituted with chicken) with prunes, raisins, capers, and olives. The result is a rich contrast of sweet, savoury, and salty flavours. It is a staple favorite of the Christmas holiday seasonal foods on the island, rarely if ever seen during the rest of the year, and served for breakfast, as a supplement to other meals such as lunch and dinner, or on their own as a simple snack along with other seasonal favorites such as sorrel.
In Cuba before the 1959 Revolution, street vendors sold Mexican-style tamales wrapped in cornhusks, typically made without any kind of hot chile seasoning in order to accommodate the milder Cuban taste. The fact that Cuban tamales are identical in form to those made in Mexico City leads one to suppose that they were brought over to the island during the period of intense cultural and musical exchange between Cuba and Mexico between the 1920s and 1950s. A well-known Cuban song from the 1950s, "Los tamalitos de Olga" (a cha-cha-cha sung by Orquesta Aragón) celebrated the delicious tamales sold by a street vendor in Cienfuegos. A peculiarly Cuban invention is the dish known as tamal en cazuela, basically consisting of tamal masa with the meat stuffing stirred into the masa, then cooked in a pot on the stove to form a kind of hearty cornmeal porridge.
In Puerto Rico there is the "guanime". It is made with yellow corn meal, coconut milk and a pinch of sugar wrapped in a banana leaf and boiled. There's no stuffing. Similar to the stuffed tamal are the pasteles but whose shell is not made with cornmeal.
