Tamales De Rajas

Tamales are a simple but a little time consuming breakfast that is consumed a lot in Mexico specially through the beginning of February. They can be filled with chicken, pork or you can actually make them sweet instead of savory. If you want to make this I recommend you make them the night before so that you can just warm them up and have them the next morning. Enjoy!

Ingredients

For the dough:

• 500 g of Tamales flour or nixtamalized corn flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 250 g of lard
• 750 ml of chicken broth, in our case we used 750 ml of warm water and 1 1/2 tsp of chicken broth powder

For the filling:

• 4 poblano chiles
• 1 small white onion
• 1/4 of watered down crema or half and half

Extras:

• You will need Tamale corn leaves

Special Supplies

• Big bowl for the dough
• Stand mixer or hand mixer
• Steamer

While you are preparing the filling and the dough submerge the tamale leaves in warm water for them to become softer for you to put around the tamale later

For the filling:

• Take the chiles and put them on top of the stove burners until they are completely burnt black.
• When they are completely black put them in a plastic bag and let the sweat for a couple of minutes.
• When those couple of minutes are done get them out of the bag and peel the skin off the chile, you can do that in the sink with water or just by hand.

• After you are done with the chiles proceed to slice the onion and the chiles. It doesn't matter if you do it a little rough and not so tin.
• When you are done slicing both ingredients put them on a pan with a little butter and a little vegetable oil so that the butter doesn't burn
• Add a teaspoon of salt
• Add the half and half mixture to the filling and mix it all with a spatula
• Continue moving the filling with a spatula until you notice the whole thing is a lot softer and easy to eat

For the dough:

• For you to do the dough you will need to beat the lard in the bowl with the mixer until it becomes soft and airy
• Add the baking powder, chicken broth or chicken broth mixture and the flour.
• Add a teaspoon of salt
• Mix all together until all the ingredients are mixed together in a homogeneous mixture

Once you have done all your preparations we will proceed to the union of the ingredients and the cooking of the tamales

Making the Tamales

• For this to be a faster and smoother process separate the dough in ten different pieces or balls for you to do a tamale for every piece of dough
• If you are using a pot as your steamer start by boiling the water that is going to be at the bottom of the steamer
• When already boiling take one of the leaves that were earlier in water and using a spoon spread one of the pieces of dough all over the leaf
• Put a spoonful of filling in the middle of the leaf with dough
• Close the leaf in a way that allows you to close all gaps for the filling to get out of the dough.
• After enveloping the dough with the leaf it should not have gaps for the steam to enter through the bottom of the tamale

If the leaf opens up in the steamer use some of the leaves that are not going to get used and by cutting some vertical strips you can use them to tie up the tamale leaf at the bottom and avoid it from opening up.

For the cooking:

• For the final step of the process you have to put all the wrapped up tamales on the steamer in a vertical way so that the side that is closed up stays at the bottom of the steamer.
• After waiting for 1 1/2 to 2 hours you can try a small piece of the dough from an exposed part of any of the tamales to noticed if they are cooked properly
• If cooked properly you can enjoy this as breakfast any day of the week

Enjoy!