January 9, 2005
Iron Chef
I don't know what to say. I like my readers, I really do. But I am feeling let down. I gave you a challenge and not a one of you gave a recipe or report of a dinner made with:
Lemon and garlic confit.
Sheesh. You would think that I had called for some unusual ingredient. Next thing you know you will be wanting me to tell you how to make lemon and garlic confit and what to do with it.
Thinly slice a Meyer lemon. Lightly pat the slices with lavender salt. Slowly fry in extra virgin olive oil over very low heat with some unpeeled garlic cloves. When the moisture has been replaced with oil, store the slices in a jar with olive oil. Use the confit to garnish baked fish, in gremolata, even chopped in salads. The possibilities are endless. Go crazy!
Your next Iron Chef assignment is:
Black beans
Polenta would sorta work, but not well. Masa is actually ground nixtamal (see where we get the word tamale?). Nixtamal is dried field corn that has been soaked in lime - processing corn that way makes the B vitamins biologically available which is why the aztec didn't get pellagra despite living on corn and beans.IF you really want a great disquisition on masa and tamales, get a copy of the cook book Cuisine of the water Gods by Patricia Quintana and read the appendix. She also has a recipe for making nixtamal and masa from scratch. I borrowed from her recipe for tamales to develop my own recipe.
If you have access to canned hominy, you can make a reasonable equivalent to masa my draining the hominy and dring it as much as possible, then grinding it and beating the resultant dough with lard or shortening (lard is better, though). I make my tamale masa without adding any fat but if you use canned hominy the fat helps it to hold together.
Alicia - a gorgeous recipe. I'm with Erik on the cilantro. We tried making tamales a few times when I was a kid, but here in the UK it's tough to find masa and corn husks (unless you do it yourself). I wonder if polenta might work instead. Probably. I think it's the same thing, but maybe to a different grind.
My idea of what you do with black beans is influenced by my time in Brazil. I like feijoada, but it's not something I would try at home. Usually I just cook them up with a blob of bacon fat, some garlic and maybe some chilis, a bay leaf or three and some salt + pepper. Serve with rice and beef. That simple. My daughter (3) got a taste for feijao preto in Brazil. I finally got a source for these in the Italian deli that just opened across the road from my office. Otherwise, they also are not that easy to find in the UK. Another tough one - rye flour, for some reason.
Posted by: stephen at January 10, 2005 2:05 AMYum! I would probably add cilantro, although I know that you don't like the stuff. Black bean tamales are great. I don't make tamales often, because it is silly to make a small batch of them, and I rarely have an excuse to serve enough people to make it worth doing, but they are fun to make and quite tasty. A tamale party can be a blast, too.
Muchas gracias!
Posted by: Erik Keilholtz at January 9, 2005 2:56 PMTamales Aztecana
Cook 1cup black beans until soft. Sautee 1 lb of summer squash (mixed) until soft, add in a bunch of greens like spinach and wilt them. mix the squash and greens with the beans. Season with chiles, salt, and lime. use as a filling for tamales.
TO make tamales, beat masa with your KitchenAid until light and fluffy. Soak dried corn husks in hot water till pliable. Spread masa on the husks, cover with fillinf, fold so the filling is enclosed in the masa and tie the tamales shut. Steam over boiling water for about an hour.