Sunday, August 22, 2010

Turning out the tamales

My mom, Chris and I took a tamale making class up in p-town this morning given by my co-worker and friend, Sherry. Class started at 10:00 am which came much sooner than I was ready for, but Sherry was ready with margaritas, chips and salsa. It's never to early for a wake up drink, right?
Class outlines were available to review which promised a day full of adventure and food. Lots of food. Since tamales take a lot of time to steam once assembled, we got started right away with preparing the masa dough and fillings.
Six students cranking out dozens and dozens of homemade tamales can make quite an impressive tower of deliciousness.
Sherry had already made a couple of batches of tamales the day before for us to eat for lunch while ours steamed for the hour and a half necessary. There was also baked black beans, Mexican rice and a green side salad.
After lunch we got busy preparing to make churros for dessert.
A dough, very similar to cream puff dough, is piped into a deep fryer from a pastry bag until it's a nice golden brown and then dropped into a bag full of cinnamon and sugar.
What does one serve with churros? Homemade cinnamon ice cream of course!
Four hours later and the Canadian was tuckered out and ready to go home.
One of the perks of the class is that you each get to bring home a dozen of the finished, steamed tamales we made that afternoon. And since there was two of us we got two dozen.
Everybody had a great time, though I don't think I would invite the Canadian to another class as he had ants in his pants by the end and wanted to leave. But since he did help make the tamales, I suppose I'll share the leftovers with him. Especially since those two dozen aren't going to eat themselves!

2 comments:

Lisa Dovichi said...

When's dinner? I'm on my way. Make me some Cinnamon Ice Cream while you're at it. :D

kath said...

Save a couple of 'em for us! They look great.