Gabriela Cámara’s San Francisco restaurant, Cala, is no longer open, but you can have a taste of Cámara’s modern Mexican cooking — and the perfect sweet ending to your holiday tamalada or tamale-making party — with these manchego cheese and quince paste tamales.
The recipe, from Cámara’s 2019 cookbook, “My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions” (Lorena Jones Books, $35), calls for store-bought ate de membrillo, but the chef says you can experiment with other fruit fillings, like chopped apricots.
Sweet Tamales with Manchego and Quince Paste
Makes 12 tamales
INGREDIENTS
30 corn husks
2 cups fresh masa (or 2 cups masa harina mixed with 1 to 1¼ cups water)
5 tablespoons butter, softened
1⁄3 cup granulated sugar
6 ounces manchego cheese
6 ounces ate de membrillo
Crema Ácida (sour cream), to garnish
DIRECTIONS
Begin by soaking your corn husks in a large bowl of warm water to soften while you prepare the other ingredients.
Place the fresh masa or mixed masa harina in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or, if you prefer to do this by hand with a whisk, in a large bowl. You want to whip up your masa to get as much air into it as you can, making it fluffy. The more it’s worked, the lighter the tamales will taste. After beating it for 3 to 4 minutes, add the butter 1 tablespoon at a time and continue to whip it until it’s well incorporated. Then add the sugar and mix for an additional 1 to 2 minutes.
Cut your manchego cheese and ate de membrillo into 12 equal logs, approximately 2 inches by ½ inch. They should look like half of a string cheese stick. It’s not crucial that they be perfectly tidy and uniform as they will be tucked inside the tamales; you just want them to fit within the masa and for each tamal to have about the same amount of both cheese and quince paste.
Take your softened corn husks from the water, squeezing out any excess moisture. Open one up and place about 3 tablespoons of the masa mixture in the center of the husk. Use the back of a spoon or a spatula to spread it into a 2 by 3-inch rectangle, about ½ inch high. It doesn’t need to be precise, just big enough to hold the fillings with enough corn husk on all sides so that you can wrap it up and no filling will ooze out.
Place one log of manchego and one log of quince paste at the center of the masa, then bring the sides of the corn husk together, sealing the filling inside the masa. Fold up the bottom of the corn husk so the whole tamal is contained inside the corn husk, then roll it up from the side. The tamal should be “closed” on the bottom and open on top. Use a second corn husk to bind it further.
There really isn’t a science to wrapping tamales. What’s important is that the insides stay as tight as possible and that no masa comes out during steaming. Repeat this process with the rest of the masa and filling. If you want, you can cut one of the corn husks into ribbons and use these ribbons to tie up the tamales for extra insurance.
Once you’ve finished, place a steamer basket in a stockpot and add 2 to 3 inches of water. Place all your tamal packages in the pot and bring to a simmer. Cover the pot and let the tamales steam for 20 to 25 minutes, monitoring about halfway through the process to make sure that there is still a good inch or two of water at the bottom of the pan and adding more water if necessary.
After 20 minutes, take one out and open it up to test if it’s done. Cut into one with a knife to ensure that the masa has the consistency of firm polenta and doesn’t ooze at all; the halves should cut cleanly and stay intact. Serve with a spoonful of the crema.
As with savory tamales, these can be cooked, stored in the refrigerator, and then simply reheated by steaming them again, and they will taste just as good as when they were freshly made.
— From “My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions” by Gabriela Cámara and Malena Watrous (Lorena Jones Books, $35)
