Tamales de chipilín

As tradition built it

Tamales de chipilín

Chontalpa, Tabasco

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• corn masa
• chipilín leaf, chopped or whole
• banana leaf, for wrapping

Method

1. Build the masa as for any tamal.
2. Fold the chipilín leaf through raw rather than cooking it first, so its bitterness stays bright through the steam.
3. Wrap in banana leaf and steam as any Gulf Coast tamal is.

Notes

No named, precisely quantified traditional recipe with exact timings from a credible Tabasco-specific source could be found for this chapter; chipilín itself is used the same way across Chiapas and Oaxaca and is not a Tabasco exclusive. This chapter states that gap plainly rather than inventing a precise quantity where none was found.

What a modern chef changes

Home masa, methi standing in for chipilín

Method

1. Nixtamalize the maize at home, the same controlled process used above, for a masa with real depth of its own before the chipilín is ever added.
2. Chipilín is not obtainable fresh, dried or frozen in Britain: use fresh fenugreek leaf, methi, as the closer of the two realistic UK substitutes for chipilín's genuinely bitter, slightly hay-like character, over the leafier but less bitter alternative of dandelion or amaranth greens, a substitution rather than an equivalence.
3. Dehydrate a small portion of the substitute leaf and grind it to a fine dust in the spice grinder, folded through the masa alongside the fresh leaf, for a more concentrated bitter note standing in for what a real chipilín tamal would carry on its own.