Saturday Graham and I walked to the winterfest festival on Broadway to see a sled dog show (so Saskatchewan!) and dropped in on a local latin food/etc store. Â I had a tip that they sell guava paste, and they had 3 kinds! We bought some, and some coconut pucks, and also some dried corn husks for making tamales. Â Tamales are a fantastic winter comfort food: dense, spicy, and when made a head they heat up fast for a quick dinner after sikiing (or walking home over the bridge and wussing out on skiing).
Most recipes I have found were for pork, but since buying some masa for plantain cakes in December, I have made some soft tacos and a few batches of spicy black bean mash. I felt Like I could handle some veggie tamale filling. We got a bag of ancho peppers to give some mexi-flavour.
There were a few mis-steps in filling and forming the first tamles, but mostly they worked really well and they tasted great! We ate 6 the first night, but 2 is probably a meal and I think we have 30 left. Freezer full of future dinners! It was a good weekend in the kitchen; we also made lentil banana muffins, southwest sweet potato burgers, chili sauce, and oatmeal molasses bread.
