Shredded Pork Tamales

Wow, I've been wicked bad about getting recipes for stuff up here lately, haven't I? Sorry about that kids. And I'm afraid this post is recipe free as well, I just didn't really pay much attention to proportions, it was all done by taste.

Oh, except the masa. I used the recipe here for that, but I subbed out the corn oil for shortening. Most of the recipes I saw wanted lard, but that's really hard to find. Next time I make them I want to use chicken fat, I bet that would be wicked good.

So I've been wanting to make tamales for ages, but I hadn't been able to find corn husks anywhere. I was whining about this to Girlichef when she posted about tamales and since she is such a wonderful human being she sent me some! How awesome is that? Not to mention the extra treats she sent which I didn't manage to get any pics of... heh. Thanks, Girli! There's a lesson here kids, if you complain enough people will buy you things.

What, that's not a good lesson? Hm. Well, forget it then.

Anyway, corn husks finally obtained, we call up a couple friends and make ourselves some tamales. I'm not going to go into a big how-to in this post since I'll be making them again sometime in the near future and will just do a whole series for it. But I did get a bunch of pics, so I figured I might as well do a post about it.

They came out wicked good, although I hadn't realized quite how dense they would be. Apparently that's normal, although Alton Brown adds some baking powder to his masa which would lighten up the texture a bit. They came together pretty easy, it's mostly just time consuming, not hard.

So I'll be making these again soon, I'll write stuff down and have a good recipe to post. That's the plan anyway. Heh.