Before Rosa Cienfuegos opened her two venues – the Tamaleria in Dulwich Hill and Itacate in Redfern – it would have been a good bet that most diners in Sydney, even the adventurous ones, hadn’t tried a tamal.
Tamales are a traditional Mexican dish usually eaten for breakfast. Parcels of masa de maíz, a dough made of alkaline-treated cornmeal, are made with various fillings of meat, cheese, vegetables, or sauce; the dough is wrapped in banana leaves or corn husks then steamed.
Cienfuegos is originally from Mexico City, and came to Australia 12 years ago. Her father opened a Mexican restaurant on Enmore Road, but found customers were not receptive to the cuisine.
“Unfortunately, I think Australia wasn’t ready for Mexican food, for proper Mexican food. We would be facing a lot of people going there and reviewing us, [saying], ‘This is not Mexican’. I was super disappointed, because this is the most Mexican you can eat!”
Cooking Mexican food in Australia has sometimes been frustrating for Cienfuegos: “On the menu we have the Mexican side and the not-so-Mexican side. So we still have the street tacos, the burritos, the quesadillas. [But] everything that sells is either burritos or nachos … because it’s what [people] know.”
Despite some initial doubts about how tamales might be received, the food she is best known for has become a local favourite.
“I’m happy to at least have the tamales still on [the menu] and they’re already super popular … I’m very proud and very happy to see all the locals coming – they’re just like, ‘Can I have my green tamal?’ They already know them – it’s part of their diet.”
The process of producing tamales is labour intensive, and there are no shortcuts. Even when Cienfuegos is mass-producing them for her stores, everything is done by hand, she says.
“There is no way you can make them with machinery. We don’t use a mixer or anything, because unfortunately, if you use a mixer, the consistency is not the same. [The dough] kind of doesn’t fluff up.”
Each tamal is also hand-wrapped and weighed individually both before and after steaming.
As far as easier Mexican breakfasts go, Cienfuegos says chilaquiles are widely popular and can be found everywhere in Mexico City. Eating chilaquiles, a dish of corn or tortilla chips covered in salsa, is a little bit of a race against time – unless you don’t mind a slightly soggy corn chip. Cienfuegos says the dish is often a way to use up leftover corn tortillas, which are cut into triangles and fried before becoming chilaquiles.
She also shares a recipe for barbacoa tacos: lamb is steamed for three hours until it is as tender as it can get, then served on corn tortillas with coriander, lime, salsa, onion and cactus salad.
Cienfuegos recalls that, while visiting her mother, who lives in Sweden, she was asked to make barbacoa.
“I was surprised that in the shops in Sweden, they didn’t have lamb meat! They had bear, and reindeer – I didn’t know what to make with that! Reindeer tacos, I guess? That was a funny one. I ended up making something vegetarian.”
Rosa Cienfuegos’ chilaquiles
Prep 10 min
Cook 15 min
Serves 4
For the sauce
2 large tomatoes, quartered
¼ onion
2 garlic cloves
2-3 red chillies
Small bunch of coriander, about 25g
1 tsp table salt
To serve
4 eggs
400g plain corn chips
80ml thickened cream
Queso fresco or feta, crumbled
In a blender, combine tomatoes, onion, garlic, chillies, coriander and salt and blitz until smooth and homogenous. Thin the sauce with water, starting with about 150ml and adding more if necessary – it should be quite liquid.
Fry the four eggs however you like, then set aside.
Warm the corn chips in a large saucepan over medium heat, then add the sauce; stir until chips are just coated with sauce and everything is warmed through. You may have to do this in two batches depending on the size of your pan.
Plate chilaquiles on a large platter, then drizzle with cream and scatter crumbled cheese over the top. Add the fried eggs on top and serve immediately, while the corn chips are still crunchy.
Rosa Cienfuegos’ lamb barbacoa tacos
Prep 45 min
Cook 3 hr
Serves 4-5
For the salsa borracha, or drunken salsa
1 tbsp vegetable oil
½ white onion, diced
10 green chillies, such as jalapeno, serrano or cayenne, finely chopped
3 tomatoes, diced
1 garlic clove, minced or grated
2 tsp salt
1 x 330ml bottle of Mexican lager
For the lamb
1kg boneless lamb shoulder or shank, cut into 3-4cm chunks
50g salt
1 tbsp grated or minced garlic, about 4-5 cloves
Banana leaves (available frozen at Vietnamese grocers and some specialty grocers)
For the cactus salad
200g cactus strips (optional; look for them in Mexican delis, specialty grocers and some supermarkets)
1 tomato, cut into thin wedges
⅓ white onion, cut into thin wedges
To serve
12-15 corn tortillas (choose the 14.5cm or 16cm diameter kind)
1 lime, cut into wedges
⅔ white onion, finely diced
Small handful of coriander, roughly chopped
Place the lamb in a medium bowl, then add the salt and garlic. Combine the ingredients with your hands, rubbing the seasoning in and making sure everything is evenly distributed.
Line a steamer insert or basket with two or three long pieces of banana leaf, crossing them over each other in the middle and allowing for a generous amount of overhang. Place the lamb inside the steamer, then use the overhanging sections of banana leaf to wrap the lamb into a parcel, tucking the ends under.
Fill a large saucepan with two litres of water; bring to a simmer over medium heat, then turn heat to low. Steam the lamb for three hours, or until the meat is tender and easy to shred; check the saucepan at around the halfway mark and top the water up if necessary.
To make the salsa, heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion, chillies, garlic, tomato, coriander and salt and cook, stirring frequently, for 7 minutes or until you have a thick salsa. Pour in the beer and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, transfer to a bowl and set aside to cool.
Once the salsa is no longer hot, blitz half of it in a blender until smooth, then return it to the bowl and stir through.
Combine the ingredients for the cactus salad and set aside.
Warm your tortillas. You can do this one at a time in a hot pan or directly over a gas flame, heating each side 30-60 seconds and keeping warmed ones wrapped in a clean tea towel on a plate. This will colour and slightly char the tortillas beautifully. Alternatively, you can wrap the whole stack in foil and place in the oven at 180C for 9-10 minutes.
To serve, set out the lamb, onion, cactus salad, lime wedges, coriander and salsa; each breakfaster can then assemble and eat their tacos one by one.
Note: This recipe makes a large amount of salsa, but it will keep in the fridge in an airtight container for up to a week. Alternatively, you could halve it and enjoy the remaining half a beer on the side of your breakfast.
