First of all: Merry Christmas Eve to those of you who celebrate it (culturally or religiously)!
Second of all: I’m going to share with you one of my happiest accidents, and an obscenely easy and cheap dinner. I call it tamale pie, but frankly, anything other than “really lazy and inauthentic Tex-Mex” is probably too glamorous. The first time I made this, I was trying to make some weird cornbread variant (which, in retrospect, would probably have been kind of gross) but was out of cornmeal and was pot-committed to the endeavor as I’d already prepared something or other to go with it. All I had was masa harina, so I said to myself, “What the hell!” Oh, I am so racy and adventurous, substituting finely ground corn for coarsely ground corn. I throw caution to the winds every day, I tell you.
The result was a super-dense cornbread and bean pie that took approximately 15 minutes of preparation and about the same amount of time in the oven, and costs almost nothing. I present to you my laziest, most accidental Tex-Mex: tamale pie. It’s also, by the way, completely and utterly delicious. For the recipe, I use an 8 or 9in cast iron skillet, but you can also just make it in a round cake pan or an 8×8 brownie pan if you don’t have cast iron. If you do, and you use a cake pan, you are doing yourself and my recipe a disservice! Yum, cast iron.
Tamale Pie
Ingredients
For the cornbread base:
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 c all-purpose flour (preferably unbleached white or white whole wheat)
- 3/4c masa harina
- 1/4c nutritional yeast (optional but highly recommended)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2.5 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 c milk
- 1/4 c canola oil
- 2 fresh jalapeño peppers, finely chopped (you can seed them if you want. If you’re a pansy, anyhow)
For the topping:
- 1 can black beans, mostly drained
- 1 small onion, quartered and finely sliced
- 1 bell pepper, diced
- garlic powder, salt & pepper to taste
- 1 tbsp cornstarch or 2 tbsp potato starch
- 1c shredded cheddar cheese
- about 2/3 a head chopped green leaf lettuce, tossed with lemon juice and a dash of salt
- hot sauce (optional; I prefer Cholula, Tapatio, or Secret Aardvark in the PDX area)
Process
- Cook onions and peppers until tender in a medium skillet. I cooked mine in 1 tbsp of butter; use whatever oil you have around.
- While these are cooking, work on the cornbread base. Turn oven to 400F and put a 9in cast iron skillet with 2 tbsp butter in while the oven heats up, melting the butter and heating your skillet.
- Mix flour, masa harina, nutritional yeast, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
- Stir together eggs, milk, and oil and add all at once to flour mix; stir until just combined and then stir in the chopped jalapeños.
- Pour into prepared skillet and put in the oven for 5 minutes.
- Once your veggies are tender, add in the can of black beans, mostly drained. Let a little of the beans’ liquid stick around. Add in spices and cook together for a minute or so; stir in potato or cornstarch. Turn off the heat.
- Pull the baking cornbread out of the oven for a moment (it will have set a bit at this point, which is what you want) and spread the bean and vegetable mixture over the top. Place back in the oven and bake for another 10 minutes.
- Again, pull the tamale pie out of the oven after the 10min are up and spread the cheese over the top. Bake for another 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted and bubbly and the center is set.
- Remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes; serve generous slices on a bed of lettuce tossed with lemon juice and salt, accompanied by your favorite hot sauce!
Easy-peasy and cheap as hell. Yum!
I will win no prizes for my food photography on this one, but it is certainly delicious.
And, last but not least, I tried this recipe the other morning. It is fast and ridiculously tasty. I made the following changes, due to what I had and did not have on hand: I only made 2 ramekins’ worth, I used 1/2 an onion caramelized in butter and glazed with sherry vinegar at the last moment instead of leeks, I put 2 eggs in each ramekin, and I stirred about 1 tbsp of stone-ground sweet & hot mustard into the cream before spooning it over the top. I highly, highly recommend this recipe. I cannot stress enough how delicious it was. If it weren’t made with cream I would eat it every day. If I didn’t restrain myself from buying cream on a regular basis, I would make this every day regardless. It’s amazing and super versatile – you could easily change the vegetables and flavors into whatever works with your other dishes. You have to bake it a bit longer with 2 eggs, FYI, but it’s easy to tell when they’re done.