Shucks

After the horrible Amiga’s experience, I thought I'd try my hand at an authentic Mexican recipe that I've never eaten nor attempted before. This ended up being far more than I bargained for, because Tamales are actually somewhat difficult without any previous know-how. I invited the closest Mexican I could find to help me assemble them, but to the best of her knowledge she could only tell me that they were too dry and that the shucks needed to be bigger. We made an effort to stick several together to encase everything, but we used way too much masa (which I forgot to add the oil to; likely why they were so dry) and not enough meat! I cut back quite a bit on the salt that was recommended and I still found them salty.

Despite being kind of cute, the tamales didn't really do it for me at all. I'm willing to give them another chance once we move to Montreal, since I'll be more likely to find a package of corn husks instead of husking a bunch of corn and working with that. I brought a half dozen of them or so to Shannon's work and everyone there, including her, thought that they were very good, though. This recipe could potentially make hundreds of tamales; I really have no idea, except that I didn't even feel like I put a dent in the filling and now have about 6 pounds of shredded, seasoned meat sitting in my fridge after making several dozen tamales.

To make use of the shucked corn I made Grilled Corn with Chipotle Butter. I honestly have no idea how long it takes to properly cook corn on the grill, but it seemed to turn out fine. There really only seemed to be a hint of chipotle spice. The rest was just sweet, buttered corn flavor. I'm not disappointed by that in the slightest.

The least photogenic of pasty starches, Refried Beans, was very good. It's always very good. It might not be good for your health, but it certainly is good for the taste buds. I was a bit starched out after sampling the tamales and corn though, so I only had a small portion. Now I've got a large yogurt container full of refried bean leftovers that will likely just get re-refried for burritos with the enormous amount of leftovers from the tamales. We'll see how it goes.