Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Back to Blog Main Page

Tamale Pie

Posted January 26, 2009
Find more about dinner , ground beef , dalai mama , cornbread
30  | 
I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

You'd have to be a real Scrooge not to love this meal, even if it looks a little bit like school hot lunch in this photo.

We've talked about this before, but I can't say it enough: puree a can of chipotles and keep it in a jar in your fridge. It is cheap, easy, and insanely delicious.

Ben can open cans! He is such a prodigy.

To say nothing of his ability to spray frozen corn with hot water, the little wunderkind.

Blooping the cornbread batter over the cooked filling. . .

And taking it out of the oven. Whose heinous oven mitt is that? I've never seen it before in my life! Okay, it's mine. Now you know what to get me for my birthday.

Yum. Really.

Birdy all glazy watching our new oil lamp. "Wow, that's so nice! I can't believe you guys never use it!" I had to say to my lovely mother THREE times before she finally said, "Oh, sweetheart, would you like to have that?" Yes. Yes I would.

Birdy's had a fever for four days; we've had bad news about work and money; Michael and I have been arguing in that gross hissing way where whenever the kids turn around you stop and smile those big fake smiles that make it look like you have twice your normal number of teeth. I actually love winter--it's like one big long glittering-blue prelude to spring--but there's something about these days that makes me feel like it's always dinnertime and I always just want to lie on the couch with a beer and order a pizza. "Hmm," I say, with my head in the freezer. "What have we got?" What we've got is ground beef frozen in one-pound packages. "This meat is from cows that actually lived happy lives," I explained to the kids at our local farm's meat sale a couple months ago. Ben raised his eyebrows. "Is that supposed to make it better? Because really, from the cow's perspective, it kind of sounds worse, like, oh this cow was so joyful and glad before we sawed it into pieces for you to eat." Point well taken. Still. We have a freezer full of meat is what I'm saying.

I like to wait until dinnertime to decide that we want to have meat for dinner, and then I like to expend a great deal of energy figuring out how to defrost it instantly. Why put it on the counter in the morning and have it be ready when you want to cook it? Why make life easy when you can Google "thaw meat quickly" and skim everyone's absurd and Salmonellic strategies? Of course, the point here is that you're taking advice from the very same people who were too disorganized in the first place to thaw the meat via any of the more traveled-on roads. "Oh just put the frozen block of it in the pan," someone wrote. "And kind of scrape at it as it starts to cook." And this, my friends, is what I did. Honestly? It was a little labor intensive, but it worked just fine.

Oh right--I still haven't even mentioned the tamale pie. This is one of those straightforward, inexpensive, one-pan meals that everybody loves. I can't tell if it's the word "pie" ("Kids, we're having lint pie for dinner!" "Awesome!") or if it's the cornbread or if it's the actual kernels of corn which, as you know, I take to be the proverbial spoonful of sugar as far as the medicine of dinnertime goes. "Can I have a little more please?" Ben always asks, with his mouth full, "And a little more? If there are leftovers, can I please take it for lunch tomorrow?" ("No, because I will have eaten it for breakfast," doesn't sound as maternal as I'd like.) Tamale pie is just a good, basic dinner--nothing fancy, but well enough seasoned that even the grown-ups will be surprised by its deliciousness. Note: Tamale pie is not to be confused with Frito pie, which I ate once from a truck in Taos, New Mexico: a small bag of Fritos with a scoop of green-chile chili dumped in. You've never eaten a more perfect meal in your life. Even writing this now I drooled a little.

I swear, come summer, it will be salads and fresh vegetables around here, grilled this and raw that, all of it floating away on a rainbow of color and crispness. But right now this seems to be the "frozen corn and meat" column. It will also, as per your requests, become the "chicken breast and school lunch" column. But first, a little frozen corn and meat:

Tamale Pie
Serves 6
preparation time: 30 minutes; total time: 50 minutes

Use what you have: ground turkey, if that's what you like, whatever canned beans you have in the pantry, skipping the corn if you haven't got any. And you could also season it differently, but try it this way first: it makes a mildly spicy meal that is pleasantly smoky and tangy but not overly complicated. You could of course use cumin or chili powder instead, and then it might taste more familiar to everybody. But try it this way first, with either the chipotle puree or the smoked paprika, both of which I wrote about in the dinner-bean column here. It is so, so good.

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons canola oil, divided (Divided by what? You'll see.)
1 smallish onion, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 pound ground beef (or turkey)
½ teaspoon chipotle puree or smoked paprika (or more to taste)
1 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided (or half as much table salt)
1 tablespoon plus1 teaspoon sugar, divided (Again. I know.)
2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 8-ounce can Hunts tomato sauce or a cup of another canned tomato product of your choosing
1 15-ounce can beans (I used pinto here, but black are good too, as are kidney)
2 cups frozen corn, thawed in a sieve under a hot tap
1/3 cup flour
2/3 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
½ cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Heat the oven to 400. In a 10- or 12-inch heavy oven-proof pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium-low heat and sauté the onions until they are translucent and browning around the edges--maybe 7 or 8 minutes (if your pan can't go in the oven, simply transfer the cooked filling to a pie plate before spooning on the cornbread batter and baking). Add the garlic and sauté for another minute, then crumble in the ground meat, raise the heat to medium, and cook, stirring and breaking it up until it's nice and browned and crumbly and does not look all raw-meaty. Stir in the chipotle puree, ¾ teaspoon of the salt, 1 teaspoon of the sugar, the vinegar, the tomato sauce, the beans, and the corn, and simmer all of it together for a few minutes until everybody in the pan gets well acquainted. Taste it for seasoning--it should be tangy and savory and delicious.

Now whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, remaining ½ teaspoon of salt and remaining tablespoon of sugar in one bowl, and whisk together the egg, buttermilk, and remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in another (I actually do this latter whisking right in the cup where I measured the buttermilk). Pour the liquids into the dries and combine with a few decisive strokes of a rubber spatula before stirring in half the cheese and pouring the mixture over the filling in the pan. It will figure itself out--you don't need to fuss with it too much by way of smoothing or whatever. Top with the remaining cheese and bake 20 minutes--though you might want to check it at 15. When the cornbread is nicely browned and cooked-looking, it's done.

Get a printable version of this recipe.

Member Comments On...

Tamale Pie

Back to Main Blog Page
Search Recipes

About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

View My Profile View My Guestbook
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
August 2006
Please log in ...
Close
You must be logged in to use this feature.
Become a member

Thank You!

Thank you for helping us maintain a friendly, high quality community at Family.com. This comment will be reviewed by a community moderator.

Flag as Not Acceptable?

We review flagged content and enforce our Terms of Use, in which content must never be:

See full Terms of Use.