On Sunday I broke out the masa harina, thinking I was just going to add water and make tortillas. But we were serving Prime Rib, and had all this wonderful fat, so I thought I’d render some out and make tamale dough with it. And Sunday morning coffee seemed like a good replacement for the hot water. So I ended up with a Prime Rib Fat & Coffee Tamale Dough.
I threw a lot at the wall to see what would stick. Before I even got to traditional tamales, I had a list of things to try:
Roll it into a log, freeze it and then slice & bake them like savory cookies (not quite what I wanted).
Press them in the tortilla press and deep fry them (tasty, but a bit greasy).
Make tamales, but vacuum seal and steam in the Vulcan Steamer (worth spending more time on). Incidentally, this looked a bit like a lobe of foie gras. Should foie gras tamales be a thing?
I wasn’t expecting to nail anything on the first try. It was a good starting point, and I hope to refine some of these ideas.
