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Mr. Sardonicus Mr. Sardonicus is offline
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Default Chilie Rellano (sp)

On Oct 7, 2:05?am, brigmave > wrote:

> Thank you for the instructions. I found this to be very good and
> filling.


All Mexican peasant food is very filling, it's usually greasy with
pork lard and the beans give you gas and the corn meal fills you up
and the chile sauce satisfies your mouth and then it burns again
coming out the other end.

The problem that Americans and people from European countries run into
is when they start to mystify how Mexican peasants cook and they begin
to believe that they are experiencing some kind of "refined" culture
and dealing with "refined" and "gentle" people when they eat a taco or
a tamale or an enchilada, or whatever.

Actually, authentic Mexican food is just the peasant food of very poor
Indians using ingredients that don't require refrigeration. Mexican
peasants eat a lot of corn and corn meal based food and very few fresh
vegetables, If there is meat in an authentic Mexican recipe, the
animal was very recently slughtered, there was no time to age the
meat, so it was probably boiled until tender and shredded.

> I also like tamales but ther are too intricate to make.


Tamales don't have to be all that labor intensive to make. You don't
have to buy dried corn husks and soak them in water and them fill them
with masa and spicy meat, you can just make a tamale casserole with a
thin lining of instant masa and a masa top.

I make my authentic-tasting tamale casserole in the microwave in a
covered bowl. Since the meat and sauce are already cooked, all I'm
doing is using the microwave for 15 minutes to boil the liquid and
then the masa is steamed while it sits cooling for the next 45
minutes.

Nacos living in Mexico do know how to do this. They put whatever they
want to cook into a clay pot and put the pot into the hot coals of a
wood fire after it dies down.

Mexicans always remember when they were poor Indians living in a shack
on welfare, so they keep on making tamales in the traditional manner
by filling wet corn husks with masa and whatever else they could
scrounge up.

These days, you know that Mexican women are recent nacos when they try
to sell you tamales in front of the supermarket.

More established nacos whose grandparents were wetbacks 50 years ago
just make tamales at Christmas and nacos give other nacos tamales the
same way Americans used to give each other fruitcake.

It has been said that naco mothers make tamales on Christmas Eve so
their little nacos will have something to unwrap the next morning, but
that's a lie, Mexicans don't believe in Santa Claus.