Nacatamal

Nicaragua's Sunday parcel: sour-orange masa enriched with lard and achiote, packed with pork, rice, potato, mint and prunes and steamed in plantain leaf

Origin: Masaya & Nicaragua

From the journey of Corn.

A nacatamal is much larger than a Mexican tamal and is built differently. The masa is enriched with lard and coloured with achiote, seasoned with sour orange, and it is packed into a plantain leaf with a piece of pork on the bone, raw rice, a slice of potato, onion, tomato, a mint sprig, a few prunes or raisins, an olive, and sometimes a chilli. The whole parcel is tied and steamed for three to four hours, in which time the raw rice cooks inside the masa and the pork fat runs through everything. The name comes from Nahuatl: nacatl, meat, and tamalli, wrapped dough. Nicaragua's Pacific side was Nahua-speaking before the conquest and a good deal of the vocabulary survives in the kitchen. It is Sunday food and specifically Sunday morning food, eaten late with strong coffee and bread, and it is understood as a dish that takes a household two days: the masa and the pork are prepared on Saturday, the parcels are assembled and tied in the evening, and the pot goes on before dawn. Nobody makes six; the pot holds thirty and the surplus is given away. The mint is the detail visitors remember. A single sprig of hierbabuena goes into each parcel and perfumes the whole thing from the inside, and against the pork fat, the achiote, and the sourness of the orange it is what makes a nacatamal taste Nicaraguan rather than generically Mesoamerican.

Ingredients

Masa

  • 1 kg masa harina
  • 250 g lard
  • 1 litre warm chicken or pork stock
  • 3 tbsp achiote oil
  • 1 sour orange, juiced, or 1 orange and 1 lime
  • 2 tsp salt

Filling

  • 1.2 kg pork shoulder on the bone, in 8 pieces
  • 1 sour orange, juiced
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 tbsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 150 g long-grain rice, rinsed and left raw
  • 4 waxy potatoes, thickly sliced
  • 2 onions, in thick rings
  • 3 tomatoes, sliced
  • 1 green pepper, in strips
  • 8 sprigs mint
  • 80 g prunes or raisins
  • 16 green olives, stoned

To wrap

  • 8 large plantain leaves, plus extra for tying

Method

  1. Marinate the pork overnight in the sour orange juice, garlic, cumin, and salt.
  2. Pass the plantain leaves briefly over a flame or through boiling water until they darken and go supple. Untreated leaves crack along the ribs and the parcel leaks.
  3. Make the masa: beat the lard until pale and light, then work in the masa harina, warm stock, achiote oil, sour orange juice, and salt.
  4. Beat it hard for a full five minutes. It should be soft, spreadable, and lighter than it started; a heavy masa gives a dense nacatamal.
  5. Test it by dropping a small piece into cold water: it should float.
  6. Lay a leaf on the work surface and spread a large ladleful of masa in the middle in a rough square about 1cm thick.
  7. On top of it put a piece of pork, a spoonful of raw rice, a slice of potato, onion rings, tomato, pepper, a sprig of mint, a few prunes, and two olives.
  8. The rice goes in raw. It takes up the pork fat and the stock over four hours and cooks inside the masa, and pre-cooked rice turns to paste.
  9. Fold the leaf over into a tight rectangular parcel, fold in the ends, wrap in a second leaf the other way round, and tie firmly with strips of leaf or string.
  10. Stand the parcels upright in a deep pot on a rack over about 5cm of water, cover the top with spare leaves, and put on a tight lid.
  11. Steam for three and a half to four hours, topping up with boiling water as needed and never letting the pot run dry.
  12. Let them stand for twenty minutes before opening, and eat them from the leaf with bread and coffee.

Notes

Beat the lard into the masa properly and test that it floats; this is what separates a light nacatamal from a brick. Soften the plantain leaves over a flame first. Raw rice, never cooked. Wrap in two leaves and tie tightly, since a parcel that opens fills with water. Four hours is not negotiable and the pot must not boil dry. They freeze well wrapped and re-steam in forty minutes, which is what Nicaraguan households do with the surplus.

The Gastrographer

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