Vegetarian Tamales

Last Thursday I cooked up some tamales to share with the other mothers at expat playgroup. The recipe I used was a vegetarian version from the Cooking Light website (I think). I chose it because it was vegetarian (so I could share with all at playgroup), and because I had the stuffing ingredients on hand.

The list of items was this: For the dough part - masa mixed up with vegetable broth. For the stuffing - mushrooms, leeks, one tomato, garlic, oregano, cumin, red pepper flakes, and S&P.


The recipe said to roast the garlic in the shell and on the stove top on high heat in a dash of oil. It said to do the same with the tomato. I liked this method. When done, the garlic just popped out of its shell. And the skin came right off the tomato, which was par-cooked, and easy to cut up.

Because my steamer is not that tall, I wrapped the tamales differently than a true tamale maker would. I still left one end *open* to let in the steam, but I laid them on their sides and stacked them on top of each other.

They turned out really good, even Rich was happy with this vegetarian version (mushrooms are meaty-ish). The only turn off is that the masa is white masa, and I'm used to yellow masa. So visually it was not as pretty to me.

I added some cheddar cheese to the left-over dough, made some small patties, and fried them up - these might possibly qualify as papusas? Man - those were tasty. I'm going to make them again, with some chopped up roasted green peppers...yum.


We also made fish tacos with homemade corn tortillas. But that meal didn't turn out so well. It looked good, but the tortillas were dense, and the fish (plaice) was just not all that tasty.


And Rich - he's just baking away. This weekend it was apple cobbler.