Tamal en cazuela

As tradition built it

Tamal en cazuela

A quicker, rationing-era cousin of the wrapped tamal, about 1 hour 20 minutes to cook.

Ingredients

• 1 lb pork
• juice of 1 sour orange juice, for marinating
• 1 onion
• 1 pepper
• 1/2 cup (as sauce) tomato
• 2 cups fresh corn, ground

Method

1. Marinate the pork first in sour orange juice, the same souring agent as the lechón's adobo.
2. Build a sofrito of onion, pepper and tomato.
3. Add the marinated pork and fresh-ground corn to the sofrito.
4. Cook loose in the pot, not parcelled in husk or leaf, until it reaches a thick, creamy, porridge-like consistency.

What a modern chef changes

Blended corn, confit pork, dehydrated pork dust

Method

1. Blend the fresh corn to a purée in the high-power blender, then pass it through the chinois for a genuinely silkier cazuela with none of the fibrous corn skin a blender alone leaves behind.
2. Confit the marinated pork sous vide before it joins the sofrito, so it stays moist through the dish's full cooking time rather than drying out in the pot.
3. Dehydrate a small portion of the pork separately into a concentrated seasoning dust, scattered over the finished cazuela rather than stirred through.