Cooking Lessons, oh my......

Good Eats Turkey Tamales (Alton Brown 2009) and where it all went wrong.

I loved watching this show and thought to myself…I can DO this!

I purchased two turkey legs and cooked them in the following spices:
Paprika (Could NOT find smoked Paprika), Chili Powder, Ground Cumin,
Pepper (Could NOT find Cayenne), Dried Oregano, Kosher salt, black pepper,

Put spices and turkey legs in a 6 quart pot in 2 ½ quarts of water, bring to a boil, cover, reduce to simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours until the meal is very tender and falls apart.

Um, well on MY stove simmer must be cooler than Alton’s because my turkey legs SIMMERED for 3 hours and still had to be ..er.. gently hacked/coaxed from the bone.

It was late, I poured the cooking liquid into a bowl, shredded the semi cooled
turkey legs into separate bowl and threw it all into the fridge and retired from the kitchen until the next day.

The next day I had to work, so I remembered that I needed to purchase one of those little metal folding basket gizmo's to steam the tamales. Put in 8.5 hours and after work picked up a steam basket.

Got home, chopped onion and sliced and diced the Serrano chili. Now I have my doubts about the chili I purchased being Serrano, it was pale green and bigger than a Jalapeno.

Warmed ¼ cup oil in a good-sized sauce pan, threw in onions, chili and garlic. Onion cooked until translucent and I stirred in the shredded turkey meat and one cup of the cooking liquid. At this point I skipped putting in the 3 ounces of tomato paste and chopped up the two nicely aging small tomatoes after seeding them.

Time to make the masa. I measured 3 ½ cups masa, the salt, the baking powder, the ½ cup lard and mixed it together. To this, I gradually added 3 cups of cooking liquid trying for the consistency of mashed potatoes and it looked more like cookie dough. Oh well. I wasn't going to fool around with it any longer.

At this point I looked at the dried corn husks and thought, “Meh, I’m not making individual tamales, I’m making a TAMALE casserole!!!”

I tossed kitchen twine in a drawer,stored the dried corn husks on a shelf as it will keep indefinitely and put the still packaged shiny metal steamer basket in the junk cabinet/drawer. It may turn up on a yard sale, who knows.

I patted the bottom of the casserole dish with a layer of masa and pricked holes in the bottom layer with a fork. I poured in the cooked turkey mixture. I pre-rolled the top layer of masa,pricked with fork and as I carefully lifted the top layer, it broke up into smaller pieces so I uh, artfully arranged the masa dough all about the top of the casserole dish. I poured in another one cup of cooking liquid and sealed the casserole with three layers of tin foil and put it in a 350 oven for 90 minutes.

I checked at 90 minutes and removed the foil and finished it in the oven for another 30 minutes.

In the mean time I made a cooking liquid gravy. I browned flour in butter and made a roux (spelling?) When the flour had browned a bit I added a half-cup of cooking liquid, stirred until thick and added another half cup and let it simmer. I added half tsp of salt, perfect!

The pictures do not look like much but it tastes GORGEOUS! I may get this recipe a little more streamlined in future, I don’t think I need 3 ½ cups of masa, maybe half that for the top and bottom crust.