We have made it into the new year! With the holidays a friend of my wife’s brought tamales to our house. There are different kinds of tamales, some are sweet and some are savory. The savory chicken based tamales here are common and are eaten at all meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Chicken tamales in El Salvador come wrapped in banana leaves. They are often made of corn meal, chicken, potatoes, green beans, chick peas, and green olives, but the ingredients other than the corn meal and chicken often vary. Some warnings for Americans are that sometimes the green olives have pits in them and the chicken has occasional bones. The chicken can be gallina or pollo. Gallina means a full grown female hen. Many Salvadorans prefer this to the young chicken meat we eat in the US because they consider it more flavorful. It’s slightly tougher and has a stronger flavor. Often you will see “tamales de gallina” meaning the tamales are made with the meat of a full grown hen, not a young chicken. The ones we received were made special order for me because they had only white breast meat with no bones, they were pollo (not gallina), and the olives had no pits. They were delicious! Another type of tamales that I love is tamales de elote. These are sweet corn tamales, which can be boiled and served in a corn husk or can be removed from the husk and fried. They’re often served with Salvadoran cream, which is similar in consistency to sour cream, but sweet not sour. Either way, they’re delicious!
