Cuban Tamales

After a couple of attempts, I have finally had tamale success! My grandmother's recipe was very short and left me with a lot of questions. I'm not sure if I got the answers right, but the resulting dish is very, very tasty.

Most people know Mexican tamales, but Cuban tamales are a little different. Definitely sweeter, and swirling with pork bits in addition to the lump or two of pork in the center. I highly encourage people who have never really liked tamales to give these a try, they might change your mind. Before the 1959 revolution, Cubans often ate Mexican-style tamales sold from street vendors. Evidence suggests that it was a Mexican import during the 1920s and 30s, since the kind and shape of Cuban tamales is similar to tamales popular in Mexico City at that time.

The best thing about doing this transcription of my grandmother's recipes (besides eating the food of course) is that her wording and descriptions brings back her voice in a lot of ways. I know she'd probably be pushing me out of the way to do it herself (the "right" way) if she were here. It is daunting though, to try and figure out what "a good amount" of butter meant to her. But that's the way she described her process. Getting these recipes down is partly about transcribing from Spanish to English, partly about figuring out what kind of ingredients she's describing, but mostly about trying to think the way she thought. When she says "4 litres of pork," I have to think about the kind of cut she used to buy and the way she cooked it. When she says "seasoned corn," I have to remember what kind of spices made up her idea of "seasoning."

Grandma in the kitchen (R), Cuba, 1950s

This could be a vegetarian dish, though I'm not sure about vegan, unless there are vegan ways of creaming corn and buttering. You could put whatever you want in a tamal, but please don't tell me if you do something heinous like put broccoli in there. I just don't need to know the extent to which you devastate a cultural and family legacy, OK?

Here goes:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. of cooked pork (I'm using the leftovers from yesterday's Cuban Feast, but grandma often simmered pork in a sauce, drained the sauce and tore up the remaining pork for this dish)
• 16 oz. corn (I used a frozen bag)
• 2 14 oz. cans of creamed corn
• 12 oz of Yellow Corn Meal (Masarepa corn meal specifically)
• 1 package of Sazon Goya
• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon of sugar

I know it looks like I'm shilling for Goya, but these products are most available, so that's what I use. Sazon is a kind of annatto seasoning packet. Annatto is a spice that has long been used as a dye and a flavoring agent in Latin America. Once you buy a package of this stuff, you won't regret it. I use it for arroz con pollo, fricase de pollo, as a way to spice up a simmering sauce for potatoes. It will become a staple. It also stains hands, sinks, and counters, so be careful!



The Masarepa corn meal is a must for this recipe. I tried making it with regular old Albers corn meal in the orange and blue box and the tamales were creamy and tasty, but didn't hold together and have the texture they needed. My grandmother's original recipe called simply for "harina maiz" without specifying what kind. When I told my mom about my tamales that didn't hold together well, she had a flash of memory. My grandmother had once told her in a market, "Pay attention to the kind of corn meal I'm buying, because after I'm gone you're going to try to use regular corn meal and it's not going to work." Bless her for doing that!

Get the corn to room temperature and pulse it in the food processor. Add the creamed corn and pulse that too. I like a few corn kernels to be mingling around in the tamal, but many people like a very consistent creamy texture. To do that, you really need to process the corn. Add the Sazon packet and mix it in well.


In a large pan or med-large pot, melt 1/4 cup of butter. Once it's melted, add your corn mixture. Stir in a tablespoon of sugar and a cup of water. If you wanted to use a broth you could. You could even replace some of the water with milk if you wanted a really creamy flavor.

Add in the 12 oz. of corn meal and stir this mixture up until it starts to thicken. It won't take too long, only a few minutes. For larger batches, you might be stirring for 10 minutes. This thickening didn't really happen when I used regular corn meal, but in my most recent attempt with the right ingredient, I could really see the difference. I whisked it up and there was definitely resistance immediately. When I lifted the whisk, a big clump remained inside. This is what you want:


Once it got to this point, I put in the pork and stirred it up. My pork was already warm, but if you need to, turn the heat low and warm up the pork you've put in the pan. Just make sure it doesn't get too dry.

Take it off the stove and let it cool for a few minutes. Don't worry, you have plenty of tamale packets to make, so you won't be bored. You could use corn husks that are soaked in water, and most foodies will want to do it this way because it satisfies some sort of need for authenticity in foreign food ways, but when aluminum foil became cheap and popular in the U.S. during World War II, guess what? It also became popular in Cuba. Since then, most at-home cooks prefer this method, which guarantees your tamales won't leak out into the simmering water during the steaming process.

To make the foil packets I pull out about two feet of foil and fold it in half length-wise. Cut this in half and you have the beginning of two packets.

You'll want to fold the edges on all three sides three times:


What you will have looks something like this:


This batch made 20 small tamales for me. You can try and make them bigger by devising bigger packets, but this is more of a side or even a snack, not a meal, so I try to keep mine almost square.

Once you've made a few, start filling them up. Pry open the packet a bit:


Then take a large spoon and shovel in some of your lovely tamale mixture. I like to push down a bit of plain mixture, add some large pork pieces, then fill with more mix.

Be sure to leave room to close off the top of the packet. It should be something like this:




The final cooking phase begins, where you steam them for, no joke, 3-4 hours. I know, it seems like a lot, but they need to steam to perfection. I placed mine in a deep pot filled halfway up with water. Make sure the tops are on top, as the top seam is often the least sturdy. If you have a pressure cooker, you could probably have them done much sooner, something like 20 minutes, but this idea occurred to me just now so I don't know how they really come out. You need the steaming to get that meal to hold together. Some recipes call for a much shorter cooking time, but my grandmother's says 3-4 hours, so that's what I did.


You can serve these a number of ways. Some people serve them with carmelized onions and garlic on top. Others actually put ketchup on the side. If it's a side for a meal, you could consider it as the starch for sure. I like it all by itself, that's how tasty this is for me. But it brings back memories of my totally fierce and amazing grandmother, who bitched about having to cook but loved doing it anyway.

Maria Caridad Leonor Garcia Morffi

My grandmother