Starting to feel the tamale jones

Those of you who’ve been following along (my family and imaginary fan-club) have no doubt read (or know) about my cross-country trek schlepping 20 dozen frozen tamales from Bernard’s in Midland, Texas back to Ohio. The original grand scheme was to set to work learning to make tamales myself and to hopefully be able to create a reasonable facsimile of the Bernard’s family recipe by the time I ran out of the real thing.

Well, you know what they say about best laid plans… anyway, it was with great trepidation and a touch of remorse that I thawed and subsequently devoured one of my 3 remaining dozen. Suddenly realizing the gravity of the situation, I decided I needed to do some further tamale research. I found this site which has a recipe that looks like a good starting point. This guy grew up on a ranch in west Texas and learned the fine art of tamale making from an hispanic “abuelita” (my word, not his) there on the ranch, so we’re at least speaking the same language, so to speak.

I figure there are three keys; first is perfecting the meat mixture. Second is the masa dough (and I know one of the secrets to this: Lard!). Third is the rolling technique, which appears to be a skill quite similar to that of rolling, ahem, cigarettes, so that’s a skill I hope will come back fairly quickly.

I’ll keep you apprised of my progress, wish me luck!

For those of you who are new here and wondering what, exactly, I’m babbling about here’s a post where I go into the tamale story in some depth, and here’s one where I mention it in passing.