hot tamale

When trying to come up with a food that's synonymous with a city or state some venues can be problematic. Pittsburgh is tough because it's so diverse and has lots of great places to eat. Arizona is a layup because Southwest fare dominates the local cuisine. My last trip there was in 1997 (U of Arizona NCAA Champs in hoops) I was blown away by some tamales at a local stand. So we decided to try and make them as our contribution to the Gallagher's Superbowl party.

Tamale ingredients are not the easiest things to come by in Connecticut so I went to a mexi-mart in New Haven to get masa mix, corn husks and such. I asked one of the guys where I could find corn husks and he looked at me like I was simple and said "produce" like I had asked a trick question. He radioed ahead to warn them of a bald gringo who was looking for corn husks. We had the ingredients and a recipe, but were not brimming with confidence. I found a video on YouTube narrated by a five year old Mexican girl that really helped. As it turns out Tamales are quite labor intensive which is why they're generally made for the holidays. We steamed up about 20 or so and got style points for originality and effort but were ultimately upstaged by the Serbian guest's brined cabbage (pronounced kisiilikoopis). But that's another story.