Chicken Tamales With Green Chile Sauce - Visit To Food City Yields Yummy Dinner

Food City, I believe, will become one of my favorite food haunts. When The Colonel took me there, we picked up masa and corn husks, and I swore on the spot to make tamales. I have only ever done this during Petal's annual Christmas Eve tamale party. For the tamale party, she sends out invitations and for everyone who attends, brings an appetizer or party snack, and helps to make some tamales, they get to take home a dozen tamales. She and the guests usually end up making some 20 dozen.

I get assigned grunt work at these shindigs, cleaning, breaking down rotisserie chicken, helping with sauce, chopping cilantro, cutting up veggie platters, and the like. She tries to have one batch cooked by the time people start arriving at 4 PM or so, so we have to have some three dozen in a kettle the size of William Howard Taft's bathtub by 11:30 or noon, or we're behind the game.

My Petal has been very critical of my tamale-making skills and often accuses me of preparing dry tamales. I can double the amount of sauce she instructs us all to use and she still says the dry tamales are courtesy of me. I think it a bit unfair.



Batch One nestled in steamer

For the average home cook, it is difficult to find space for a giant kettle-sized steamer, and I am envious of Petal's. But I managed with a pasta pot with sieved insert just fine. You just need to steam in smaller batches. And I made sure to put in a little extra sauce in homage to my bestie.

The preparation process was not without its hiccups. I failed a bit on water watch and when The Colonel asked what was burning I rushed to the stove and had him help remove the steamer insert while I cleaned out the burned bottom of the pot and started new water. It luckily only imparted a very faint taste, which The Colonel dubbed "smoked". This is a man to love, girls.

We had met a new neighbor the other day: Mary and her darling pit bull terrier Valentina. Mary and I share a love of Talavera pottery and all things Mexican, so I told her I was making tamales. She immediately asked: red or green chile sauce? I make both, but this time it's green. Follow up question: do you shred your meat? Of course!

I brought her a few to try, and I am hoping I selected some that were not from the "smoked" batch. Mary did say she is particular about her tamales, being from El Paso.

I served these with leftover Drunken Beans.

Mangia!


Chicken Tamales with Green Chile Sauce
Adapted from Mexican Family Cooking by Aida Gabilondo

1 (8 ounce) packaged dried corn husks
1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed (10 to 12 medium)
Fresh, hot chile peppers, stemmed and roughly chopped (about 4 serranos or jalapenos)

4 large garlic cloves, peeled

1 ¹⁄₂ tablespoons vegetable oil or 1 ¹⁄₂ tablespoons olive oil

2 cups chicken broth

Salt

4 cups cooked chicken, preferably grilled, roasted (about 1 lb.) or 4 cups rotisserie chicken, coarsely shredded (about 1 lb.)

²⁄₃ cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro

4 or 5 pound bag of prepared masa

Directions

Preparing the cornhusks. Cover the husks with very hot water, weight with a plate to keep them submerged, and let stand for a couple of hours until the husks are pliable.

Preparing the filling: On a baking sheet, roast the tomatillos about 4 inches below a very hot broiler until soft and blackened in spots, about 5 minutes; flip them over and roast the other side. Cool and transfer to a food processor or blender, along with all the delicious juice that has run onto the baking sheet. Add the chiles and garlic and process to a smooth puree. Heat the oil in a medium-size saucepan over medium high. When quite hot, add the puree all at once and stir until noticeably thicker and darker, about 5 minutes. Add 2 cups of the broth and simmer over medium heat until thick enough to coat a spoon quite heavily, at least 10 minutes. (If you are making a double batch of the recipe, make sure to cook the filling for a longer amount of time.) Taste and season highly with salt, usually about 2 teaspoons. Stir in the chicken and cilantro; cool completely.

For forming the tamales, separate out 24 of the largest and most pliable husks—ones that are at least 6 inches across on the wider end and 6 or 7 inches long. If you can’t find enough good ones, overlap some of the large ones to give wide, sturdy surfaces to spread the batter on. Pat the chosen husks dry with a towel.

Forming the tamales. Cut twenty-four 8- to 10-inch pieces of string or thin strips of cornhusks. One at a time, form the tamales: Lay out one of your chosen cornhusks with the tapering end toward you. Spread about ¼ cup of the batter into about a 4-inch square, leaving at least a 1 ½-inch border on the side toward you and a ¾-inch border along the other sides (with large husks, the borders will be much bigger). Spoon about 1 ½ tablespoons of the filling down the center of the batter. Pick up the two long sides of the cornhusk and bring them together (this will cause the batter to surround the filling). If the uncovered borders of the two long sides you’re holding are narrow, tuck one side under the other; if wide, roll both sides in the same direction around the tamal. (If the husk is small, you may feel more comfortable wrapping the tamal in a second husk.) Finally, fold up the empty 1 ½-inch section of the husk (to form a tightly closed “bottom” leaving the top open), and secure it in place by loosely tying one of the strings or strips of husk around the tamal. As they’re made, stand the tamales on their folded bottoms in the prepared steamer. Don’t tie the tamales too tightly or pack them too closely in the steamer. They need room to expand.

Setting up the steamer. Steaming 24 husk-wrapped tamales can be done in batches in a collapsible vegetable steamer set into a large, deep saucepan. To steam them all at once, you need something like the kettle-size tamal steamers used in Mexico or Asian stack steamers, or you can improvise by setting a wire rack on 4 coffee or custard cups in a large kettle. It is best to line the rack or upper part of the steamer with leftover cornhusks to protect the tamales from direct contact with the steam and to add more flavor. Make sure to leave tiny spaces between the husks so condensing steam can drain off.

Steaming and serving the tamales: When all the tamales are in the steamer, cover them with a layer of leftover cornhusks; if your husk-wrapped tamales don’t take up the entire steamer, fill in the open spaces with loosely wadded aluminum foil (to keep the tamales from falling over). Set the lid in place and steam over a constant medium heat for about 1 ¼ hours. (depending on the size of the tamales you make, it can take up to 4 hours). Watch carefully that all the water doesn’t boil away and, to keep the steam steady, pour boiling water into the pot when more is necessary. Tamales are done when the husk peels away from the masa easily. Let tamales stand in the steamer off the heat for a few minutes to firm up. For the best textured tamales, let them cool completely, then re-steam about 15 minutes to heat through

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