Montucas

Ingredients

• Fresh corn — on the cob, husks kept10
• Chicken thighs800 g
• Lard150 g
• Sweet pepper1
• Onion1
• Tomatoes3
• Annatto2 tsp
• Olives80 g
• Capers40 g
• Sugar40 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Strip the husks from the cobs whole and rinse them in warm water.

   20 min

2. 2

   Cut off the kernels and grind them in a blender with the juice they release.

   25 min

3. 3

   Beat the lard with salt and sugar and work in the corn mass until even.

   15 min

4. 4

   Simmer the chicken until tender, pull it into threads and keep the broth.

   40 min

5. 5

   Fry the onion, pepper and tomatoes with the annatto and add the chicken, olives and capers.

   18 min

6. 6

   Spoon dough onto a husk, add filling, fold it over and tuck the ends under.

   30 min

7. 7

   Stand the parcels upright in a pot and steam them an hour and a quarter.

   80 min

About the dish

The dough is made from fresh corn rather than dried masa. The milky kernels are ground with their own juice, and the tamales come out faintly sweet on their own.

They are wrapped in the green husks from the same cobs. Those give the grassy scent a dried tamal wrapper no longer has.

The parcels stand upright in the pot, packed tight. Lying loose they unwrap under the steam and the filling drops into the water.

Worth knowing

• — The dough should be as thick as soured cream and not run off the spoon. A thin one leaks out of the husk under steam.
• — Warm the husks in water before wrapping. Dry ones crack along the fold and the parcel opens.
• — Test one parcel: the dough should come away from the husk. If it sticks, give them twenty minutes more.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

540 kcal

Protein

28 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Honduras

• Baleadas — A wheat flour tortilla folded over refried beans, soured cream and crumbled cheese.
• Conch soup — Conch soup in coconut milk with cassava and plantain. The Garifuna cooking of the Caribbean coast.
• Pastelitos — Fried corn turnovers with meat and potato under a cabbage salad.