Making Tamales

Wow this was a lot of fun this week. I love mass production so getting a system down for wrapping the tamales was right up my alley. Ben, my star ingrediant assembler made all the fillings and then it was my turn. Banana Leaves are beautiful things to work with, tamales can also be wrapped with corn husks, someday maybe we will try those. So after unfolding the banana leaves it was awesome to see how big they are- taller than either of us. They were cut into pieces to wrap the tamales, about five inches across, with the grain of the leaf. Ben roasted off the squash:
We mixed up the masa in our kitchen aid until it was spongy.
Cut ties for the tamales by ripping strips of the parts of the leaves that didn't cooperate with us.
Lay out the leaves and smear some masa on them. I found stationing up 4 at a time to be great help, so leave plenty of counter space for assembly.After smearing on the masa, make a well in it for the sauce (ben made a lovely green mole), set up some squash on the mole and then fold up your tamale by bringing in the sides so that they overlap and folding the top and bottom.
Use a tie to keep them together, and you have yourself a beautiful little package.To cook them, they need to steam for about an hour. We filled our stock pot with some water, balanced a plate on a jar and loaded up the plate with tamales. It worked great. They really stack well on one another.Vegetarian tamales are wonderful and a lot lighter than their typical counterpart that are made with lard- vegetable oil (crysco) is a great substitute.