Nacatamal (Pork Tamal with a Pre-Cooked Masa, Boiled in Banana Leaf)

Variations

• The name: Korean Wikipedia traces it to the Nahuatl nacatamalli, "meat tamal". It is what it says.
• Vinegar for sour orange: the article gives vinegar or sour orange juice, with annatto and salt, for the pork. If you cannot find sour orange, use 3 tbsp vinegar let down with a little water.
• Honduras too: Korean Wikipedia introduces it as a traditional food of Central America, Nicaragua and Honduras among them, and says it is counted among Nicaragua's national dishes.
• About the photograph: it shows the parcel just before it is closed — cooked masa spread on a banana leaf with raw pork, soaked rice, tomato, pepper and mint on top, and a sheet of foil under the leaf.

Tips

• The masa is cooked before it is wrapped. The article's order is: melt lard in a large pot, add the masa and cook it, stirring, and when the watery mixture has cooked to a thick paste, take it off the heat and let it cool. Corunda treats the same masa the opposite way, beating room-temperature lard for air, and says why: "The only leavening is the air you beat mechanically into the fat, and in the steamer those bubbles expand while the starch sets around them." Nacatamal's lard is melted and used to cook the masa. There is no air here to protect.
• So the boiling time belongs to the pork and the rice. Corunda reads doneness from the leaf: "Once the starch has fully gelatinised the surface goes smooth and the leaf peels away by itself, which is a better signal than the clock." This masa passed that point in the pot, when it thickened. What needs three hours inside the leaf is a piece of raw pork and the rice. Cooking the masa first finishes the dough; it does not shorten the boil.
• Not arepas either. For arepas, "Pre-cooked means the starch was gelatinised once and dried", and water brings it back. Nacatamal does that cooking the same day, in the pot, and uses it without drying it.
• Soaked rice, and only a spoonful. The rice is soaked first, as the article says, and suman gives the reason: "Glutinous rice soaked overnight holds nearly all the water it needs to cook". But as wrapping and sealing puts it, "Soaking first reduces it and does not remove it." The rice still swells in the parcel, so it goes on as a spoonful, not a layer.
• Tie it tight and boil it. The parcel is wrapped well, tied tight and boiled. It sits in water, not steam, so lay two leaves across each other so that no seam lines up, and tie the string both ways.