Our friends Anna, Jason and Otis came by this week to drop of some holiday gifts, including homemade tamales and salsa. (They're amazingly generous and thoughtful, and we're so lucky to be among their friends. I really can't say that enough) Tonight we made the first batch for dinner, which turned out to be much more exciting than we'd anticipated.
I had made some vegetable stock earlier in the week using leftovers from a veggie tray, but was left with mushy vegetable goo in my big stock pot after straining it. With the weather so bad, we haven't gotten around to taking it out to the compost. So when I needed to steam the tamales, I had to use a smaller pan. I got it all going, set a timer for 25 minutes, and sat down in the living room with Dan to enjoy 'House Bunny' starring Anna Faris.
I checked on the pan after about 8 minutes, just to make sure the water wasn't going down too quickly. I guess I should've checked more often, because when the buzzer went off and I went in the kitchen, the bamboo steamer was smoking, not steaming. And stupid me, I took the lid off - giving it a burst of oxygen. So suddenly the bamboo was in flames. Dan came into the kitchen to see a giant blaze on the stove, and me opening the kitchen door, grabbing the pan and everything on top, and tossing it out into the snow. The fire was extinguished, Dan got the smoke alarm to stop, and we actually saved the tamales!
And they were perfect. A little smokey, but perfect. The black stuff in the picture is charred bamboo steamer and corn husk.
1 comment:
Oh my goodness! Otis read your story, and his quote was, "Well, at least they saved the tamales."
Glad you are all alright!
xoxoxo
-Anna, Jason & Otis
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