I LOVE the smell of tamales cooking!

Today was annual Tamale Making Day. I look forward to Tamale Day every year; it began, oh, around five years ago. A dear friend, who also happens to be a neighbor, invited me over because she had all the ingredients for tamale making, and no one to make tamales with (another friend who had been going to make tamales with her had had a change of plans).
We embarked on a tamale making adventure that day, neither of us ever having made tamales before, and what began as a rather haphazard experiment has become a day that is looked forward to by both families with at least as much anticipation as the holidays themselves.

Last year (Tamale Day 2008) we made nearly everything from scratch, including the masa, and our goal for this year (Tamale Day 2009) was to make everything but the chicken stock (used in the masa) from scratch.

We did it!

Ingredients:
Masa - harina (masa flour), butter, salt, shortening, and chicken stock
Chicken - 10 lbs, boiled in advance
Pork - 8 lbs, slow cooked overnight
Red Sauce - dried California chilies, garlic, cumin, salt, flour, olive oil
Green Sauce - tomatillos, jalapeno peppers, garlic, salt, cilantro, cumin, onions, oil (for sauteing)

We made:
Pork with Red Sauce Tamales
Chicken with Green Sauce Tamales
Cheese (Pepper Jack) and Jalapeno Pepper Tamales

And, just for fun, we looked up a recipe for Pineapple and Cinnamon Tamales, at the request of Dani's sister (she joined us this year), and Dani threw them together right at the end. We haven't tried them yet; we'll have to see what happens - we could add a new regular flavor.

All in all a good day, and the best part of it is enjoying the smell of the tamales cooking as I write this...yum!