My mother is visiting Montana where I was partly raised. This has made me absurdly jealous and nostalgic. To combat this I've turned to food. We usually make these Tamales only around the holidays, Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter, due to their labor intensive nature. I suppose you could make a batch of say a half dozen and cut it down to a few hours, but it usually makes more sense to just mark a day on the calendar strictly for Tamales. When we were pressed for time we would buy masa from the local market and use dried chili powder instead of making a paste from the chilies, but I felt like taking the long road today. This recipe is my grandmother's and is very familiar to me. I am quiet certain that I am making them wrong and completely different than how you like them, but fuck off. It's my childhood I'm making, not yours. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, lets get at the heart of it, yes?
4 cups maseca
1/2 cup lard
3 pounds pork shoulder
3 dried Californian Chilies
3 dried New Mexico Chilies
3 dried Arbol Chilies
1 pack ojas
4 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon peanut butter
2 squares dark chocolate
1 can black olives (optional)
Salt
Water
Makes like, two dozen-ish.
Separate the ojas and soak them in cold water.
Mine floated so I had to weight them down.
Bring two cups of water to a boil in a small sauce pan and add the chilies. Let them boil for a good five minutes until they are soft, then drain and chop. Transfer, seeds and all, to a blender or food processor and pulse will a bit of water until a paste forms. You want this to be pretty fine to avoid chunks of chili skin in the molé.
Place pork shoulder into a pot just big enough to fit it and fill with cold water until the pork is just covered. Add the chili paste and stir until dissolved.
Set to high heat and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a slow simmer for at least 2 1/2 hours. I recommend putting on swim trunks, taking your laundry to the laundry room at the apartment complex, then hitting the pool with lime based cocktails. Moscow Mule, Dark and Stormy, Margarita, Gimlet, or tequila shots with a lime chaser are all acceptable. This allows you to relax and enjoy your Sunday a bit while getting everything in the wash but your swim trunks and a towel. After everything is on hangars and sorted, your pork should be fall apart tender. Transfer pork to a bowl and pull apart with two forks, then set aside.
Set remaining liquid to a slow boil and leave uncovered to reduce.
In a large bowl mix four cups of masa with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and lard. This will give you a very loose dough. Slowly add two cups of water, working the dough until it has a hummus like texture. You might need more than two cups, you might need less, it all just depends.
Bit of a side note here, I called my mother in Montana for these instructions and at this point she said "spread a thin layer of masa in a two inch strip on the smooth ojas." She did not specify vertical or horizontal or perpendicular to the grain or parallel to the grain. This resulted in about two dozen ojas with masa parallel to the grain, which of course is dead wrong. I will save you the misery and specify that the quarter inch of masa should be spread PERPENDICULAR to the grain of the ojas on the smooth side in a two inch strip.
You can prep a bunch in a row, it will save you time assembling later but only if you have help, otherwise its probably best to assemble each tamale start to finish. Or you could do the prep work, mug it up, then have to make them one at a time anyway.
Transfer a few ladles of the molé to a small bowl. Add the flour, peanut butter, and chocolate then whisk into a slurry. Add this back to the sauce and it will thicken right up. It should have the consistency of a heavy gravy.
Add one or two cups molé to the pulled pork. Now to assemble! place a heaping spoonful of the pulled pork into the center of the masa. I like to add a black olive to every third tamale because my sisters hate them and its always fun to see them get one but its personal preference. Cover with another masa'd ojas, roll together then tie the ends off with a 1/4 inch strip of ojas.
Another side note, you should probably skip the next paragraph if you are Mexican.
My grandmother, who was super Mexican and had a half dozen Mexican babies and dozens upon dozens of Mexican grand kids, was very adamant about how all of her tamales were to be assembled and why. She never folded her tamales, always tied them, because, and this is a direct quote from her, please please please understand that she was crazy and this is not how I feel and I have eaten dozens of FANTASTIC folded tamales, "Lazy Mexicans fold their tamales." She would also sit on you if you were bad, not just like for a few seconds but like a half hour, and if you got too close to the butcher block while she was making tortillas she would throw one in your face that would stick and suffocate you and she would laugh while you clawed at it, desperate for air. She also drank diet caffeine free Coke, which is just weird. What I'm trying to say is I only tie my tamales because if I don't she will sit on me. Tied, folded, its just a different way not to die for a few more days, yeah? Back to the plot though.
I used a 20 quart brew kettle to steam them, but if you don't have a pot that big you can work in shifts. Place a vegetable steamer in the bottom with a half inch or so of water.
Next built a fort of tamales in the pot, making sure to leave a shaft down the middle to allow for air circulation (thanks Sarah's dad for the tip on that one). Then place a kitchen town over the whole thing to trap the steam, cover with the lid and turn the heat up to medium. It needs to be at a very, very low simmer, just enough to steam, so adjust as needed. Check back in an hour and a half to two hours, or four episodes of The Inbetweeners. The masa should easily separate from the oja and taste cooked, not awful. Serve with the molé, guacamolé, salsa, rice, and beans. Some people like sour cream as well but they are just awful.
