Since we moved to Japan we have been slowly teaching ourselves how to make what me miss from living in San Diego for so long. After a lot of experimentation we are finding that the flavors we love so much are not from any elaborate spicing but are in fact from some simple and sometimes unsuspected ingredients.
If a carpetbagger and his Washington State wife can make Tamales that make our Mexican friends go "omnomnom", I am sure you can too. I can send you a recipe when I get home.
+1, my wife is Colombian and we were looking for ingredients to make tamales for a long time, finaly, we use Italian corn flour (polenta), French salted bacon, canned chick peas and buy banana tree leafs at a Chinese grocer.
We make a lot of tamales that we freeze and we just reheat them with steam before eating it with a hot chocolate.