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TAMALE PIE
“That stuff that you
used to get in the high school cafeteria line.” Previous
attempts at making this have failed, because I used leftover
chili. Here is the definitive way, as simple as it sounds:
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1 onion
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Oil
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1 pound ground
beef
-
2 tablespoons
ground chili powder
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1 teaspoon ground
cumin
-
Leaf-style
oregano
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Salt & pepper
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1 tablespoon
garlic powder
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1 can diced
tomatoes
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Frozen corn
(optional)
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Black olives
(optional)
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3 cups water plus
1 extra cup
-
1 cup corn meal
Chop the onion and
sauté it in the oil. Add the ground beef, and sauté that until
it’s brown. Into the beef and onion mixture add the ground chili
powder and ground cumin and oregano, salt & pepper, and garlic
powder. Add the diced tomatoes. Cook until all the moisture
disappears. Optional: add frozen corn and black olives.
For the cornmeal
mush: pre-mix the corn meal with 1 cup of water; add the other
3 cups of water; stir and boil until thick (takes about ten
minutes), then cool.
Line a casserole
(bottoms and sides) with the mush (it will have the texture of
clay), and fill with the meat mixture. Take the remainder of
the mush and drop in spoonfuls on the top. Bake it for one hour
at 350°. Check to see that the crust is browning; cook a little
longer if needed. Of course the olives are not native to New
Mexico, and would not have been available originally, but they
are so pretty.
REFRIED BEANS
Use pinto beans,
which are the multicolored beans that turn brown when cooked.
Black beans can be used as an alternative. Cook the beans
slowly in one day; you, don’t need to add meat and other stuff,
and only a limited amount of salt and pepper. Let them cool,
then drain the juice. Mash the beans with a potato masher. Fry
the mush in an iron skillet with 3-4 tablespoons of lard (you
could use vegetable oil, but the best taste results come from
lard), keep turning so it doesn’t crust.
The recooking is what
changes the flavor, the beans take on character. They aren’t
really refried, because they aren’t fried first.
“Double-cooked.”
CHILI PEPPERS
The major object that
is used in New Mexico cooking is the chili pepper that is grown
locally, not “funny” hot imported ones, but rather the peppers
grown there at high altitude. The chilis have different levels
of heat, and also different flavors. Doyle is a Chimayo fan:
it has a different flavor. (Available on the web from
chilecaldron.com at
http://www.salsasetc.com/catalog/d-775b.html ).
When making an
enchilada, use a cup and a half of red chili pepper, water, a
little bit of cumin, a little bit of oregano, a little bit of
garlic, maybe a little bit of salt. Cook it until it thickens:
that’s the napping (?) sauce for an enchilada.
At Rancho de Chimayò,
they have a special recipe for cooking pork chops in nothing but
a red pepper sauce. It’s called carne adovada.
Caller from Vermilion
County: on a trip to NM, went to grocery to get chili powder.
Asked another shopper what brand was good, and was directed to a
brand called Chimayo. Do I just substitute it spoon for spoon
in standard chili recipes?
It is only ground
chili, not a mixture; your recipes called for chili powder,
which is a mixture of ground chilis with cumin, oregano, and
garlic. It’s magnificent in flavor, but temper it: to 2
tablespoons of the ground chili, add 1 teaspoon of ground cumin,
1 teaspoon of oregano, salt and pepper, and 1 tablespoon of
garlic powder. Chimayo is one of the best.
Same caller: A
friend gave her 2 red chili plants which have flourished in the
garden. Each chili has turned red and is about the size of your
little finger; what can be done with them?
Pick them off, dry
them whole; you can use a needle and thread to make a garland of
them. Let them dry thoroughly. When you’re ready to use them,
put on rubber gloves, break them open, empty the seeds out; then
take the pods and put them in warm water to soften; then put
that in blender to make enchilada sauce (won’t be as smooth as
made from powder). The veins and seeds are the parts that are
really hot.
How hot is the
Chimayo? Not really hot hot hot; but there is an additional
“ambience” that you can smell, it is different, and good.
Southwest cooking is not hot-laden, it is flavor-laden. Also,
when you cook hot peppers, they cool down.
Eating a teaspoon of
cayenne pepper is good for your system, it does not cause ulcers
or acid reflex; it may even be good for you. Cayenne is not a
red chili, it’s a cousin.
Capsicum oil is what
you respond to as heat in chili. You can get used to it, build a
tolerance, and crave even hotter examples.
Caller from Mahomet:
I eat habaneros peppers whole and raw. Different chilis have
completely different tastes, not just heat. A habaneros from
Jamaica is completely different from a habaneros from the
southwest. If you eat a hot chili dish quickly, it gets hotter;
you can temper the hotness by eating or drinking something with
fat (milk or cream cheese). If you want to make chili but don’t
want to go to all of the trouble, McIlhenny (of Tabasco sauce)
make a spicy chili sauce (available at Art Mart in Urbana): just
add meat and beans to that sauce. At World Market, I get dried
habaneros, pound them dry, and then put the dry flakes on pizza,
better than red pepper flakes.
The heat of the
chilis modifies the other flavors of what you are eating, it
isn’t the thing itself. Different chilis do have different
flavors, even the same variety grown in different places.
Caller on cell
phone: Does anybody know a local source of fresh culantro?
Also called Mexican culantro, popular in Puerto Rican cooking,
tastes like cilantro times ten, i.e., a more flavorful
substitute for cilantro. I found a source for seeds on the net,
but am looking for fresh herbs. Perhaps it is hard to grow?
Also used in Asian cooking, so you might try some of the Asian
markets (though finding it fresh might be hard). There are
instructions on the web for growing the plant from seed at
http://www.caribbeanseeds.com/culantro1.htm
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