Just one little addition to Crabbers explaination to a tamale. I have a Mexican friend in our neighborhood who makes a big batch pretty often and takes orders......has regular customers and has done this since I was a child. She is about 20 years older than I am and used to send her daughters around the neighborhood to let neighbors she was making a batch and asked anyone who wanted some to let her know how many she should make. First the 'dough' or 'paste' made from corn masa (very fine ground corn meal) just the right consistancy to be spread on a corn husk (what we call shucks). The corn husk is discarded when you are ready to eat them!!
The paste is spread on the corn husk........a layer of meat (pork, beef, beef and pork mix, or chicken) ground very fine with a thick gravy, is then spread on the masa paste, the corn husk is used to keep the moist tamale together while it is rolled up and steamed. The corn husk wrapped tamale is then put into a steamer and steamed to just the right temperature (and I have never convinced a real Mexican to give me the instructions or seasonings used in the meat mixture or steaming). Mine are usually delivered in a bundle of half dozen tamales tied together with twine string, and they appear to be dry, but when heated until just warm in a steamer and served with your choice of a thin mexican flavored gravy topped with shredded cheese and diced onions, or fine chopped lettuce tomato and onions the consistance of the tamale is soft and moist............and out of this world delicious!
Another way to eat a tamale is to simply open the corn shuck and eat the tamale by itself.........no gravy, no cheese, just take a bite
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Special ordered you can have them made mild, medium, or spicy. I can handle the medium but have an idea the spicy ones would challenge Randy's 'hot' salsa
) I've tasted a spicy one and it'll set your world on fire for awhile
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Living as close to Mexico as I do, a vast majority of the population near me are from Mexico or still have family in Mexico. Occasionally when walking through the meat market in our grocery stores, I will look down and see the dead eyes of a whole hog head staring at me from the meat bins for ingredients of special or 'ethnic' meats, and know that some Mexican families still prefer their tamales made from the meat from 'whole hog head'. I've been told that most tamales made for public sale use other than hoghead meat.
The use of the hog head is to cook and skin the hog head, scrap the contents of the skull and other meaty content, and prepared in a secret recipe to make authentic tamales. I doubt that many people outside the Mexican communities and familys has ever had the pleasure to have enjoyed one of these 'authentic' tamales and am told that the ones made for public sale are made with real meats from pork beef or chicken.
I have run into Julie (my tamale lady) a couple of times in the grocery store and espied a whole hog head in her grocery basket so I'm not sure whether I've experienced the real thing or if she makes those only for family consumption. I only know that she makes great tamales
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