This is my mother's recipe for Cuban Tamales. Below is a picture of her original recipe. The printed words are hers. Through the years we changed a few things. The scribbles in blue are mine. I have adjusted some things and changed it to English for you.

To make Tamales it takes a few steps but the results are delightful.

Ingredients:

2 small bpneless pork chops , cut in small pieces

1 14 oz can cream corn

1 cup frozen or canned cut corn

2 cups cornmeal

1/2 green pepper, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

2 tsp garlic powder

1 cup tomato sauce

3 Tbs bottled Italian dressing

8 oz extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp salt or to taste

18 “ wide Heavy duty foil paper, cut into pieces about 12” You will need about 8 pieces or more if you are making the tamales smaller.

In a large frying pan, on medium high heat, sautee pork in the oil until it starts to turn slightly golden. Add onion and green pepper. Add tomato sauce, salad dressing, salt and garlic powder. Lower heat to medium low and simmer for about 5 minutes. This makes a sofrito.

Meanwhile in a medium bowl, fold together the cream and the cut corn with the cornmeal.

Add the corn mix to the pan and mix everything together. Remove from heat.

With a large spoon or ladle place 2 medium scoops of tamale mix on the foil paper. Taking the longer ends, fold tightly. Fold each end very tightly in. If they are not tight, the mix will fall out as you are cooking them.

While you are doing this, fill a large pot or pressure cooker halfway with water and start to bring to a boil.

When all the tamale pockets have been made, carefully place them in the boiling water. If you are using a pressure cooker, cook for 1 hour once the pressure has come up. If you are using a regular pot, cover, lower heat, but keep a slow boil on. It will take about 2 hours in a regular pot.

At the end of the cooking time, remove all the tamales from pot and place on a platter to settle. If you open them too quickly after you take them out of the water, they will be watery and not quite formed.

You can serve them whole as a main dish with rice, soup or a salad or you can cut them in smaller pieces to serve as an appetizer. I like to drizzle a little hot sauce over them just before eating.

What you don’t use, leave in the foil, place in a zip lock back and keep in refrigerator.

To reheat, you can either unwrap, place on a microwave safe dish, cover with a paper towel and reheat in the microwave for about 2 minutes, or you can bring a pot of water to boil and place foil wrapped tamal in and heat for about 20 minutes. If you have the time, I prefer to reheat them in the boiling water. I think the consistency is more like when freshly made.

If you see my note at the bottom right of my mother’s recipe, I came up with 11 tamales on 2/11/1990. This time I made them bigger, so I only came up with 8. You can control how many you make by the size of the foil paper and the scoops you put in. If you are making them as appetizers I recommend that you make them on the larger size and then cut them to the size and quantity you want after they are cooked..

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Enjoy!