Tamales!

This past Sunday's food project: Panamanian tamales! banana leaves and all! I got a big pork shoulder the day before, to make shredded carnita-style meat instead of chicken. No time (or energy) to do the fresh corn grinding, so I used store-bought masa/cornmeal. I woke up early and biked to the latin mini store in search of banana leaves and "achiote/annato". I had seen the corn husk leaves at the store before, but not the banana leaves. So I was surprised to learn it comes frozen. The packaged had one giant leaf, which I thought may not be enough, but that thing was huge! I made sure to boil them for a while, since I wanted to be safe than sorry.

I used a recipe with 3 lbs of pork and 4 lbs of cornmeal. It ended up making a huge batch! I ended up with 23 tamales AND tamales de olla (one 8x8 and two mini loaves, which I ended up freezing). The tamales I boiled right away, ate 5 on Sunday night and froze the rest. The cake pan I cooked in the oven and had it for lunch/dinner the last two days.

The filling was yummy. I think the corn masa needs to be more mushy/wet. The only bad part was that I did not season the corn mush and the filling properly and it lacked flavo(u)r/salt. We've had to add salt to each portion individually when we cook/eat.

It was a lot of work... Probably make them again, but it'll be a special occasion or when I need to stock up the freezer with food.