Yeast cooking with Masa Harina?

[Adam Balic]

Due to a miscalculation of my own cooking ability I was left with a kilo of masa harina and some fresh yeast after the weekends Mexican cooking. So I combined the two.

I made a fairly straight forward hearth cake mix then cooked in very slowly on on side until the bottom was brown and very crisp, while the top was soft, but cooked though. This was then filled with some bean chile that I made.

Thus:

OK, it was very good and with a bit of refinement it could be even better, but my question is, is this type of yeast cooking done in the Mexican kitchen (if so recipes or descriptions) or have I invented the fluffy taco?

Edited November 3, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[theabroma]

Verrrry interesting stuff.

In my experience in Mexico, and in reading and researching, I have never found a reference to using yeast in corn masa. It is not uncommon, however, especially in small towns and rural areas to use day old or soured masa to make atoles, and various masa based foods.

It seems that yeast is pretty strictly related to wheat flour items. There may be some mixing of leftover masa with wheat flour, additional liquids, and eggs to make pancake like things ... but I would also guess that this would take place randomly in one house or another, especially in large cities, and in a family with an international and Mexican pedigree.

There is such a thing as a fluffy taco - a puffy taco - and it is of fairly recent origin. It appears to be a treat from the frontera, and likely devised on this side of the border. It is slowly working its way across. But it is made from a flour tortilla, or, at best a flour tortilla dough leavened with baking powder, to which a tiny bit of corn masa has been added. Sort of the cornbread dough of Mx??!!!

I am going to try your taco, though. It looks way cool - kinda like a gritty pancake w/nice texture.

Theabroma

[Adam Balic]

Thanks for that. I would have guessed that sour dough/batter was a natural process and likely to happen spontaneously. Curious that this doesn't seem to be the case.

If you do try to make these, cook them very slowly as you want them to dry out the top without burning the bottom. This technique was/is used to produce various oat based hearth cakes in the UK.

[theabroma]

Adam, thanks for mentioning the oat cakes ... that helps me get an idea of what I'm dealing with.

My experience with masa - directly and indirectly by asking un chorro of questions to any mayora or market lady who'll endure the barrage - indicates that it sours rather rapidly. Even under modern refrigeration after about 3 days all bets are off. And it really sours. If you leave it out on the counter, and add some water to make it a bit liquidy, it still sours and does not begin to bubble and puff.

My understanding is that in the absence of gluten, the masa won't go anywhere but south. However, if you add some wheat flour to it ... then it will 'sponge.

Crudely thought through and quickly stated: wheat and yeast came w/the Spanish, although in the appropriate regions people began to use pulque as a leavening agent. There is an entire class of panes de pulque, which now are dying out as pulque begins a retreat, and Pan Bimbo rules the day. It seems that the Spanish gravitated to the population centers or built little kingdoms on their encomiendas, and this had everything to do with the spread and introduction of wheat flour around Mx. Also, the wheat ranches were established from Tlaxcala through Queretaro and up into the northern part of Mexico, approching what today is known as the Frontera, and where flour tortillas have ruled alongside, and sometimes over, corn ones for some time.

Today, it becomes increasingly difficult to get a flour tortilla once you get south of Monterrey. In the rural areas the pure masa and the corn tortilla rule. In the larger cities it is not uncommon to find that a little wheat flour is sneaked into the masa when making gorditas, molotes, and the assortment of masa whimsies served as appetizers in restaurants and by street vendors from carts. On the Frontera, a guiso would more likely be thickened with a spoonful of wheat flour; in the Centro and south, with a bit of masa diluted in water.

The boundaries are largely intact, though there is some blurring around the edges: there are gorditas made from wheat flour (thick flour tortillas, kinda like an unholy cross of a hockey puck and a crumpet), and I have seen recipes for the occasional tamal with a wheat flour dough (a steamed dumpling, in my book).

Really didn't mean to run on so ... but you made a wonderful thing and asked some very good and provocative questions. Now I am going to be driven crazy trying to find out about the origins of pan de pulque. The mfg of a reliable dried or fresh cake yeast is of very recent origin. It was commonplace in Europe to utilize the dregs of beer bottles or beer vats to get yeast for mfg of bread. Since the indigenous groups of Mexico were ob viously familiar with the process and effects of fermentation (pulque, balche, etc) just who was it that decided to used pulque to give the bread dough liftoff, instead of wine or beer or wild yeasts?

Anyone? Caroline? Get in here!!!!

Regards,

Theabroma

Edited November 4, 2005 by theabroma (log)

[Adam Balic]

Good guess I did cut the Masa with 1/5 wheat flour.

Regarding yeast etc. Commercial bakers yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae and this may or may not have been around pre-European contact in Mexico. But there are many other agents that can act as a raising agent. Typically sourdough breads a symbiosis between wild yeast and lactobacilli. So San Francisco Sourdough has the wild yeast Candida milleri sp. nov. and the lactobacilli Lactobacillus sanfrancisco sp. nov., while German Rye bread has the yeasts Candida krusei, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Pichia saitoi and Candida milleri and the bacteria Lactobacillius brevis, casei, fermenti, pastorianus, bucheneri, delbrueckii, leichmannii, acidophilus, farciminis, alimentarius, brevis var.lindneri, fermentum, fructivorans and Pediococcus acidilactici.

In the case of the rye bread the bugs are in the flour, but they can just as easily come what is floating about in the air. They co-exist with the grain, which is why we get to take advatage of it.

So there should be a similar thing happening with Masa. Possibly due to the structure if the corn cob and the processing you will not get in of the microbiol flora from the plant it self, but there should be some parts of Mexico where there a re naturally occuring bugs that will start fermentation a'la San Francisco.

Due to the lack of gluten you may not ber able to produce an airy loaf of bread, but if you can make a light tamale* you should be able to ge enough rise to produce a hearth bread type produce with a lighter texture (and hopefully an interesting flavour).

The lack of these types of breads strikes me as being a bit odd. Maybe there is some property of Masa dough that means these products don't work or maybe just taste bad, but they should exist in some form or another.

An interesting problem.

*Tamales - without baking soda (19th century) and lard (post-European contact) how did these exist at all in the Mexican kitchen? Maybe they originally a got some lightness from natural fermentation?

Edited November 4, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[shelora]

This might seem off base but how would the inclusion of natural corn oil in the masa affect the souring process?

Masa harina and the brand Maseca that we get up here has all the natural oils removed from the corn to it does not spoil.

In Mexico, many families grow their own corn and make their own masa, hence the flavour difference. This is a natural masa.

In terms of leavening agents before the Spanish arrived. Pulque would be one, but I have also heard that the husks of tomatillos have a leavening agent.

But I have never heard of a recipe or dish using them.

Cool experiments, Adam.

s

[theabroma]

Certainly there are wild yeasts in the air. And there are those which hang out on fruit, such as the natural yeasts on grapes. (Not all grapes are old world - Vitex mustangensis, for example; but sugar-loving critters that yeasts are, they would/could be around on tunas, etc.)

The original tamal masa often had no leaveners - they just whipped the bejesus out of it with their hands, adding cold water from a height. When you think of the tamal as beginning its life as a steamed bread, this makes sense. Somewhere down the line they figured out a veritable witches' brew of the husks of tomatillos infused in water to which a crushed powder of tequesquite, an alkali occurring naturally as a precipitate from certain brackish water lakes (apparently similar to natron, which Egyptians used in mummification and similar precipitates at the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Probably also the Dead Sea).

This 'coccion' was strained and added to the tamal masa to lighten it. Today people use Royal, which is to say, baking powder.

But being that corn does not contain precursor proteins for gluten, you cannot develop that stringy, webby network you get from wheat flour which traps the yeast belchings or chemical gas and causes the rise. The main means of aeration or lift in tamales is the air you can whip into the fat, and, ultimately, the masa. The added baking powder helps a little, but very little.

I have been making masa and steaming it blind to taste test the differences between no fat, fat only, the coccion, and with baking powder. So far, fat vs no fat, and the strong arm of the KitchenAid or Hobart seems to rule. All of the various recipes for tamales that I have - and with the exception of Kennedy and Bayless, I am referring to books in Spanish by Mx researchers or food specialists, many do not use baking powder at all, or else in quantities so slight that they would have to be veritable Davids to hoist the Goliath of all that masa. The coccion does, however, have a distinct taste ... somewhat acquired. It is quite common for the third ingredient of the infusion to be anis seed, not to add lift, but to mask the taste of the alkali. Obviously the use of anis seed is post=Conquest; I have not yet found anything indicating that there was a native saborizante used to minimize the alkali taste prior to the arrival of anis.

Also, the tamal doughs which are cooked like cream of wheat, and which have melted fat added to them do not use baking powder. The texture of these doughs is like very light polenta. This masa is from the Mayan regions of Mexico and is typically used with banana leaf or chaya wrappers.

Theabroma

[esperanza]

In the Zacatecas area, wheat flour gorditas are very thin, just a bit thicker than a standard corn tortilla. After they're cooked, they're split and stuffed with whatever guisados are available. There's a small chain of restaurants--Gorditas Doña Julia --in Zacatecas that serves only these gorditas and they are out of this world.

[caroline]

Adam, Love your experiments. This is a brief note to say I am with Theabroma. The maize and wheat kitchens do not mix much in Mexico.

There is a huge wheat kitchen, very interesting, and not very well documented. Pulque (sap of maguey that ferments naturally though that is to oversimplify things) must have been used very early for this kitchen. And then commercial yeast when it became available. It was the food of the urban well-to-do criollos. Many regarded eating corn as a huge comedown. (They still do in fact. I have friends, Mexicans of many generations, who proudly say they never eat tortillas.) This group, if they eat maize, do so outside the main meal structure as "antojitos," little whims, snacks.

There is of course an equally huge, probably huge-er maize kitchen, mainly the rural poor (who have little use for the urban rich or their wheat breads). They eat corn tortillas three times a day. They are FOOD.

The wheat products they eat are snacks. They may be homemade (lightly raised often wholemeal sweetened with piloncillo, raw sugar, for example and known by many names including wheat gorditas) for example. Commercial wheat products (subsidised bolillos, crackers from the early twentieth century, then sliced white bread from mid-century, lately flour tortillas) are snacks too, something to buy from a street stand, give the children after school or to take when traveling.

Some of the corn kitchen (tamales) is very lightly raised mainly with tequizquite which is plentiful in Mexico. It's a mixture of salts left in dry lake beds with no constant composition but acting like any other chemical leavener.

But there seems to be nothing in Mexico like the cornbreads of the US where you are trying to substitute maize for wheat. the wealthy have essentially always been able to get wheat so had no need of this.

In any case you cannot produce fluffy breads with masa harina unless it has wheat flour added because of the lack of gluten (as Theabroma says). Maize is sometimes fermented to make drinks but it's a whole different fermentation technology.

So what seems natural in England (mixing flours of different grains) is, I speculate, here a no-no (as, say, mixing sweet and savory is in classic French cooking). Here the Spanish and the indigenous (very roughly) still have not merged into the desired "cosmic race."

That said, I agree with Theabroma that many restaurants in Mexico now offering corn "tortillas" have added a good bit of wheat, partly because masa harina makes a second-rate inflexible tortilla that gets a bit of flexibility from wheat flour, partly to cater to modern "international" tastes.

Your fluffy tacos would, I think, be greeted with cries of joy here as a variant on the enormously popular "hot cakes"--American-style pancakes introduced, I believe, by the Chinese railroad workers who moved from the US to Mexico in the nineteenth century. These are now one of the most popular breakfasts in Mexico at least in urban areas and regarded as authentically Mexican.

At least that is my off-the-cuff reaction. Any other ideas, folks?

Rachel

[Adam Balic]

Lots of interesting ideas, thanks.

I have to go to a 6 hour wine tasting in a few minutes, so I will be brief.

The social aspect of the picture makes sense too.

I agree that without gluten, you will not get a high rise, but another aspect of sourdough fermentation is the flavouring side of things.

In the UK some 100% oat hearth cakes were made, these were often allowed to naturally sour overnight, then the hearth cakes were made from this.

I would think that there would be some textural changes as well as the dough would become more acid, so likely to be changes in the composition of the dough, but although there is no gluten to trap large air pockets, heat will case disolved CO2 to come out of solution and some of these fine bubble will get caught in the matrix of the dough/batter when it is cooked.

Actually, maybe that is it. The difference between batter and dough cooking. Are products from the corn kitchen made from a batter ever?

[caroline]

Adam, interesting questions again. I'm in a bit of a rush too so here off the top of my head are some comments. Over the next few days I will ask around and do some experiments with fresh masa and masa harina. A quick glance through the Recetario del Maíz (this first appeared in 1982 and has been reprinted as vol. 10 of the marvelous Cocina Indígena y Popular series) with its well-over 1000 recipes bears out the following:

(1) I don't think soured masa is used. May be the sour part of the complex flavor changes is not desired/needed in the maize kitchen because the basic sauces are so often sour, usually from a base of tomates (tomatillos) which also give much of the body.

(2) I don't think batter cooking was ever part of maize kitchen. It would have been hard to do on an earthernware comal which has only gone out in the last generation. Even the metal comals that are now used are of very thin metal and soon become an undulating warped surface, fine for tortillas, not for batters. Pancakes (hot cakes) and crepes are both now authentically mexican, but part of the wheat kitchen and late nineteenth century in origin. They are not home cooking in the villages (the rural/urban divide is crucial).

Plus

3) I don't want to give the impression that there was no overlap between the two kitchens. for example, in the eighteenth century, judging by the many recipe books we have, it was very common for the well-to-do to use nixtamal to make the elaborate layered or filled tortas that were de rigeur in Europan cooking. There are still traces of these in well-to-do Mexican cooking, though again obviously not in the villages.

4) the fermented maize drinks usually begin with the grain, not with nixtamal.

Best,

Rachel

[theabroma]

Mercy, this is fascinating!!!!!!

Thanks to Rachel, I realize that I wasn't clear about something: fermentation and souring are generally similar processes, yet quite different in particular. I am aware of soured masa being used to make atole, and being used to make the masa for certain very particular styles of tamales. It may have wider application than the examples I am aware of. I am equally unaware of any fermented beverage or dish made strictly from nixtamalized corn. Rachel is again correct that those types of products (eg: Andean chicha, or corn beer) begin with the fermentation of the whole grains.

As for batters I do believe that there are area within the Mayan regions - especially in the Yucatan - where the nixtamalized masa is diluted somewhat and 'poured' onto a banana leaf, which is then set on a comal to cook into a tortilla. If you will accept that as batter cooking, then that is the one example of it with which I am familiar.

Oddly, it is both feasible and easier to make corn cakes cooked on a griddle from fresh field corn, or from the dried corn, not nixtamalized, but cooked to soften it, and then coarsely mashed and griddle cooked. But that is just a statement of 'fact'; I do not have any examples of that being done in Mexico.

So, on we go. I am looking forward to what Rachel digs up.

Theabroma

[theabroma]

3) I don't want to give the impression that there was no overlap between the two kitchens.  for example, in the eighteenth century, judging by the many recipe books we have, it was very common for the well-to-do to use nixtamal to make the elaborate layered or filled tortas that were de rigeur in Europan cooking.  There are still traces of these in well-to-do Mexican cooking, though again obviously not in the villages.

It is my impression that it is the india or the mestiza who ran/runs the kitchens of the well-to-do, rather than a chef, usually European trained, as is more typically the case here in the US. (Eg, in extremis: I was once called in to serve as sous chef for a very special event in the home of a Dallas family: the chef was British, as was his friend who had come from Britain for the event. As the evening wore on I learned I was cooking with Princess Diana's former chef, and the Queen's pastry chef. I had to retire to the Ladies' to recompose.)

That being the case, how might that situation affect the use of nixtamalized corn in the household. Was wheat embraced? Was it window-dressing? I am guessing that the majority of the ladies of the house were relatively or totally unskilled in the ways of the kitchen, leaving the person running the kitchen in a kind of catbird seat.

I have, also, known a few who disdained things corn, especailly tortillas. But after having the opportunity to get to know a wide range of Mexicans from the social spectrum, it seems that it is mostly those on a rigorous upwardly mobile path who eschew tortillas, and things like that. They also purport to be of such delicate, sensitive, and high-strung constitution, that anything spicy, especially chiles, is devastating to them. Do you run across this as well??

[esperanza]

Mercy, this is fascinating!!!!!!

I am equally unaware of any fermented beverage or dish made strictly from nixtamalized corn.  Rachel is again correct that those types of products (eg:  Andean chicha, or corn beer) begin with the fermentation of the whole grains.

Hmm...I recently wrote an article about several of the odder Mexican beverages (aguamiel, pulque, tepache, pajarete, tuba, and tejuino). In fact, tejuino is a slightly fermented beverage made from masa--nixtamalized corn--not from the whole grain. Let me quote from the article:

"Since ancient times, cooling tejuino has refreshed Mexico. It's made from the same corn masa (dough) that's used for tortillas and tamales. The prepared masa is mixed with water and piloncillo (cone-shaped Mexican brown sugar) and boiled until the liquid is quite thick. It's then allowed to ferment slightly—but just slightly. I've never known anyone to get so much as a buzz from sipping a cupful of cold tejuino.

"Once the tejuino is thickened and fermented, it's mixed as needed with freshly squeezed jugo de limón (key lime juice), a pinch of salt, water, ice, and a big scoop of lemon sherbet. Here at XXXX, it's sold in plastic glasses—small, medium, and large—or in a plastic bag with the top knotted around a drinking straw."

Is it possible that tejuino is the only (however slightly) fermented drink that's made from masa?

It's good to read these posts. This is a really a great thread.

Edited November 7, 2005 by esperanza (log)

[shelora]

Mercy, this is fascinating!!!!!!

I am equally unaware of any fermented beverage or dish made strictly from nixtamalized corn.  Rachel is again correct that those types of products (eg:  Andean chicha, or corn beer) begin with the fermentation of the whole grains.

Hmm...I recently wrote an article about several of the odder Mexican beverages (aguamiel, pulque, tepache, pajarete, tuba, and tejuino). In fact, tejuino is a slightly fermented beverage made from masa--nixtamalized corn--not from the whole grain. Let me quote from the article:

"Since ancient times, cooling tejuino has refreshed Mexico. It's made from the same corn masa (dough) that's used for tortillas and tamales. The prepared masa is mixed with water and piloncillo (cone-shaped Mexican brown sugar) and boiled until the liquid is quite thick. It's then allowed to ferment slightly—but just slightly. I've never known anyone to get so much as a buzz from sipping a cupful of cold tejuino.

"Once the tejuino is thickened and fermented, it's mixed as needed with freshly squeezed jugo de limón (key lime juice), a pinch of salt, water, ice, and a big scoop of lemon sherbet. Here at XXXX, it's sold in plastic glasses—small, medium, and large—or in a plastic bag with the top knotted around a drinking straw."

Is it possible that tejuino is the only (however slightly) fermented drink that's made from masa?

It's good to read these posts. This is a really a great thread.

←

Fascinating, Esperanza. Can we access the full article, I'd love to read it.

Is tejuino something found only in certains states of Mexico? It sounds delightful, especially with the scoop of lemon sherbet!

I'll be searching for it this next trip. I leave on Thursday!

[caroline]

There's so much going on this thread now, I hardly know where to begin. So I'm going to begin with Adam's original question. And here I have two additional comments.

First, I wonder if the difference between flour and masa is significant. Granted what I take to be the basic rule of grain history, every thing that can be tried has been tried, I can't help wondering if dry versus wet grinding made a difference.

Europeans worked with dry powders, flours. Perhaps it was natural to try adding different proportions of liquid. Batters were easy to work with, particularly if you had the right implements.

Mesoamericans only occasionally worked with dry powders, usually a powder of toasted maize (pinole). But I have never heard of pinole being left to sour. Perhaps because it is so good as it is or as a gruel. Instead they worked with cooked grains to produce a plasticine-like consistency just right for tortillas or tamales.

Adam, though, was not working with masa but with masa harina and naturally treated it as he woud flour.

Second, I've always assumed that the reason why Mesoamericans of the High Plateaus did not ferment maize into an alcoholic drink was the same reason that Mediterraneans didn't. If you have a plant that obligingly grows on ground that cannot be used for grain and that produces a fruit or sap that is easy to ferment (grapes or maguey), you don't waste your precious grain turning it into alcohol.

And incidentally on a near-batter, one of the girls who works for me brought me "gordita de elote" yesterday. Nearly dry maize (this is the season) ground, milk and a bit of sugar added, plus anis and cinnamon, and cooked on maize husk. I gather the mixture was still thick enough to be made into a gordita-type object. Delicious incidentally,

Rachel

[caroline]

The country people I have asked in the last couple of days say sour masa is for the pigs. And that they never use batters.

The latter is borne out by the Recetario del Maiz.

The former has exceptions. This same book has a recipe for a Guanajuato tamale made with soured masa spread on a cloth or leaf, spread with the filling, and then rolled up like a jelly roll and popped in the hoja de maiz. I've actually had tamales made this way in the market here. But I would swear the masa had not been soured. Nonetheless it seems soured masa is the exception.

Rachel

[Adam Balic]

Pigs?

Damn, there goes my idea for a nation-wide chain of "Fluffy-Tacos: The taste of Mexico that never was" stores.

[caroline]

Ah, you never know Adam. Tastes are changing fast in Mexico with urbanization. And there is always the pancake model!

But it does raise interesting question about how societies treat their grains. And right now I have eight bowls of masa harina and masa with various admixtures of water, flour and yeast sitting in the kitchen to see what can be done with them.

Rachel

[Adam Balic]

I will look forward to see how it turns out. My advise is to cook them very slowly, so that the moisture is driven out without the bottoms burning. Plus you get better holes.

[caroline]

Adam et al,

The results turned out unexpectedly fascinating.

I tried 6, all mixed to batter consistency:

masa plus water

masa harina plus water

masa plus 1/5 flour plus water

mh plus 1/5 flour plus water

masa plus flour plus yeast plus water

masa harina ditto

I was surprised at how differently they reacted not just in terms of texture and smell (masa much smoother and with a delicious smell) which might have been expected. But they also differed greatly, hugely in their willingness to ferment. The masa was much more resistant to fermenting than the masa harina even though I used Minsa which is supposedly nothing but nixtamalized maize.

I havenot had time to cook these batters as I am just off for a couple of weeks. But I want to repeat the experiment when I get back and also ask my maize cereal scientist buddy if she has any insights.

Rachel

[theabroma]

I found an article on Discovery about an early 'micro brewery' and beer bust from the archaeological record in Peru, and it was too good a read to pass up. Apparently the whole enterprise was devoted to making chicha, or corn 'beer', and the patrons drank it dry, smashed their cups, and torched the establishment.

It added some perspective to directly fermented corn; besides, it's fascinating!

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051...w01-101-ae-0000

Theabroma

[theabroma]

Caroline, I will have some time over Thanksgiving to play in the kitchen, and I'd like to give those batters a try. Any measurements I need to be aware of? I am assuming that the 1/5 is a volume, rather than a weight, measure.

I'm looking forward to it ... who knows? Crepes for turkey w/after the fact mole sauce?????

Thx,

Theabroma

[Adam Balic]

Actually, I think that the corn crepes would be really good with Mole.

I hope you both post more on your experiments.

[hiinakemenduro]

Your crepe-like dish reminded me a bit of a dosa, although dosas are thinner, but your spicy bean filling is similar.  If you wanted to go "fusion" I think you could make a soured masa-based batter instead of soured/fermented rice in the batter.  However, without the urid beans one puts in a dosa batter, it might not hold together well.  A fermented batter of pintos is tasty, but they do not (I know from sad experience) have the binding abilities of urid beans.   That was a do once.  I am terrible at crepes anyways...  it is a skill. 

 

Sometimes I do make an "idli" of fermented/soured pintos and fresh masa (not soured).  After I grind the nixtamal, I add some oil, baking powder (could probably be baking soda if using fermented pintos), and then I add a batter of ground fermented pintos instead of water until I have a thick soft "cake" batter---this is like the dough (almost batter) one makes for real tamales.  I do not add salt because I put salt in the ground pintos to help them ferment/sour instead of putrify. 

 

To make the fermented pinto "buttermilk" I first wash the pintos, soak them overnight, drain and wash them the next morning, grind them (in a food processor or in the plate mill one uses to grind the nixtamal).  To the ground pintos, I add a bit of water to get a batter-like consistency, and then salt, 1 to 2 percent by weight of the batter (it turns out not to be a lot of salt...  teaspoonish, depending on the amount of ground beans).  I put that in a warm place (my oven with just a pilot light) to ferment for about 8 hours, after which it is bubbly.  If one was concerned about color, I think it is best to use urid beans which have been split and freed of the black hulls.  Maybe some other white bean would work, but I never bother much with color.  Pintos are cheap (what I can afford), so I use pintos. 

 

I would not serve these "idlis" or "unfilled tamales" either to Indians or to Mexicans.  They would look like something familiar but still actually be something very different.  No matter how good (or bad) they might be, expectations would just make them too weird to be enjoyed.  I eat them with a rasam-like soup...  that consistency (like a juice or a broth) but using only ingredients I can get locally, such as tomatoes (no tamarind, sadly), onions, chiles, garlic, a bit of toasted chickpea flour, that sort of thing. 

 

I do a lot of Indian/Mexican fusion cooking because I am vegetarian with a laudry list of allergies and a very limited food budget (pintos, field corn, and cal are cheap here).  Sometimes the result is terrible, and I do not make that again (although I eat it).  Sometimes it is wonderful.  A mole is not all that different from a curry on the conceptual level.  Look at the ingredients...  lots of overlap and some interesting divergences.