Tamal pisque

As tradition built it

Tamal pisque

Makes 10 to 12. About 1 hour 30 minutes in the pot, with the maize cooked first.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

The masa

• 900g dried maize kernels
• 3 tbsp wood ash, or a small pinch of cal
• as needed water
• 225g pork lard
• to taste salt, pepper and chicken bouillon

The filling

• frijolitos molidos (ground fried beans)

The wrapping

• as needed hojas de huerta (banana or plantain leaves)

To serve

• to serve tomato salsa

Method

1. Cook the maize in plenty of water with the ash already in it, until the kernels are very soft.
2. Wash the maize very well, to take off the ash and the dark skin each kernel sheds.
3. Grind it, at a nixtamal mill if you can.
4. When the masa is smooth, work in the lard, bouillon, pepper and salt. The masa is not cooked first, so this seasoning decides the taste.
5. Wash the leaves and pass them over a hot comal to soften them.
6. Lay two leaves across each other, spread masa on them to the size you want, put beans in the middle, and wrap.
7. Line the pot with leaves, set the tamales on them, cover them with water and lay a last layer of leaves on top.
8. Cook about an hour and a half over a low heat. Serve with tomato salsa.

Notes

The name's connection to ash-based, rather than lime-based, nixtamalisation, nizquesado from ceniza, ash, is repeated across recipe sources but not confirmed against a linguistic authority, and is presented here as a plausible but unverified etymology.

The recipe is Celina's, of Recetas Salvadoreñas. The ash tints the masa green. Misael Alemán, of El Salvador mi país, makes about 30 with three cups of beans, a tablespoon to each tamal on a 25cm leaf, cooks the masa first and leaves out the ash; La historia del maíz en El Salvador cooks the maize in ash the day before and the tamales 2 to 2½ hours.

What a modern chef changes

A stated extrapolation, not a guess dressed up

Method

1. Dehydrate a portion of the cooked bean filling before regrinding and folding it back through the fresh purée, concentrating its flavour rather than diluting it into a wet mash.
2. Toast and grind fresh achiote and sweet pepper flakes in a dedicated spice grinder for the reddish colour the masa is named for, rather than a commercial paste.
3. Steam over a Big Green Egg run as an indirect oven with a water pan, checking doneness by feel at 45 minutes rather than trusting a fixed time no source actually gives.

Notes

What follows is our own reasonable extrapolation, since so little firm technique documentation exists for this specific dish.