The tamales at the Tucson Tamale Company have been featured on The Splendid Table, NPR's good food show. I'm a big fan of Splendid Table, so, for my birthday yesterday Ed and I hunted up this shop and tried out the tamales.
The tamale fillings -- tasty combinations of meat, corn, cheese, beans, chilis and more -- are wrapped in corn husks, shown in the foreground of this photo of the kitchen. The tamales are steamed (to eat right away) or frozen (they ship anywhere in the U.S.) after being wrapped in husks. Everything is gluten free and lard free. I hadn't thought about the gluten free thing, but of course, a corn based food would be gluten free.
To eat them, you peel away the husk and enjoy the filling. Tucson Tamale Company has vegetarian and vegan fillings, in addition to the traditional meat offerings. In some ways, tamales remind me of the Upper Peninsula favorite, the Cornish pastie.
Here's Ed in his orange polo shirt, photographed on the orange painted patio, a pleasant spot at the back of the tamale shop. The tin bucket in the lower right of the photo is the "husk" bucket where one places the discarded husks.
We enjoyed our lunch on the back patio at Tucson Tamale Company and will certainly look forward to fixing the frozen tamales that we purchased to have with salads and rice.
Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler
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