Cooking Louisiana  -  Tamale Pie
Tamale Pie is a quick and easy dish to make. Although the Tamale Pie recipe appears complicated, once you make it you'll see it's very easy. This is one of those recipes you can change somewhat to what you like.

Tamale Pie

1 - lb. ground beef
1 Med onion chopped
1/2 lg. bell pepper chopped
4 cloves garlic minced or equivalent powder
1 sm. can whole kernel corn
2 sm. cans tomato sauce
1 tsp. sugar (to kill the acid)
1 tsp. ground cumin
3 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. Dale's Steak Sauce or Worcestershire
Salt and pepper to taste

1 cup corn meal
1 and 3 cups water (I'll explain)

Grated cheese of you choice

Put three cups of water in a pot on the stove and put it on a med-low fire. We're eventually going to bring this to a boil to cook the corn meal.

In a small bowl combine one cup of tap water and one cup of corn meal and let sit.

Brown the ground meat and drain... set aside

In a skillet sauté' the onions and bell pepper in a little oil until wilted. Add the meat, garlic and corn and cook a few more minutes. Add everything else in the first group above and simmer for about 20 minutes or so. Add salt and pepper and taste it; it should be a little salty (I'll explain).

Turn up the fire on the water on the stove and get it boiling; add a little sprinkle of salt. Add the wet corn meal and lower the fire to med-low. Stir constantly (this is important) until it resembles grits; it will thicken. Once it thickens up cover it and turn the fire off. That part is done.

Light the oven and set at 400ºF

Taste and add seasoning to the meat mixture as you like. (Explanation) The mix needs to be a little salty to make up for the corn meal even though we put salt in the corn meal mix.

Now just get a casserole dish and mix the corn meal and meat sauce together very well. Sprinkle a little shredded cheese if you want. Bake at 400°F for 25 minutes.