One Hungry Kitchen: TAMALES! YEAAHHH!!

I'd probably sound nuts to inarticulately express how much I like tamales--the concept, the excitement of making them, the taste, texture, everything, so I'll skip the attempt.

In any case, I made them today! BIG batch just for ME!
I invested in a bag of the prepared masa flour from the Mexican foods store downtown Zurich (El Maiz), (check out the receipt total: 16.00! Indeed, it's that expensive here--hence any guests visiting me from the US/mexico are enthusiastically welcomed to bring me a housewarming present of either corn husks or masa flour for the purpose of making this dish in the future.) I remember buying the equivalent in Texas for $1.50... (and mind you the swiss franc is stronger than the dollar now)

So, I prepped two fillings-- pulled chicken/turkey and BEANS. I do the meat one by heating a pot, pouring in some oil, slamming in the chicken breasts and turkey fillets (1.2 kg in total), and covering it to slightly brown and simmer them down for a good while. In the meantime I chop some onions (about 4), then toss those in, as well as a serious load of spices: garlic, paprika, onion powder, oregano, basil, cayenne pepper, CUMIN, salt, and black pepper. I use a similar spice mix for the beans filling (~1.2 kg beans), also adding some sauteed chopped onions (~5-6), and tomatoes (~400 g), and olive oil.
I prepared the masa not using lard, but a vegetarian version that also does not use vegetable shortening--a product of hydrogenated (hence solidified) unsaturated oils which leaves me suspicious. I've done this before, and it worked fine--so again this time-- a mix of butter and olive oil, giving a decent mixture or the saturated and unsaturated fats that can get the masa dough to a nice texture-- I prefer what's probably considered a bit firm... Don't freak out over the quantities, since this makes a LOT of tamales-- so with the 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) masa flour, I added also over 2 kg water (2+ Liters), 350g olive oil, and 350g butter. Hence I have about 5 kilograms (ll lbs) of masa dough in that bowl there.
In any case, I also season the masa flour with paprika (gives a nice golden-orange texture and I like the flavor, too), a "little" cumin, pepper, onion powder and veggie boullion. Then bring that up with water.

Then when the meat's cooked, let it cool down, and then get all in there with your hands to pull it apart into nice tendrils, mixing all those spices and chopped cooked onions into it.
Okay! Assembly time!!! Best with company.... but allright, with some good music, still fun alone.

I prefer pretty large tamales with lots of filling (opposed to ones with lots of the masa dough), so this is how I like to do mine:

Great! Assembled 28 large chicken/turkey ones, and 21 bean tamales:

So here's my big pot for steaming:

I learned long ago from my friend's mom Yolanda, that it helps for steaming to put extra corn husks to make a sort of cone in the middle of the pot, then the open end of the tamales can angle upwards for the steaming process: