X-LNT Tamale Pie

A visitor to southern California in 1893 described the tamale as “a curious and dubious combination of chicken hash, meal, olives, red pepper, and I know not what, enclosed in a corn-husk.” Enclosing meal in husks is as old as the Aztecs’ tamalli, but the olives are a California addition. Californian also is the device of turning a Mexican tamale into a Mexamerican shepherd’s pie by enclosing meat and olives between layers of cornmeal mush. I grew up on this k