Christmas Tamales and a Naughty Chihuahua

Christmas Tamales and a Naughty Chihuahua

Making tamales right before Christmas is a holiday tradition in the Mexican world.  I’ve been making these husk-enclosed treasures for the past quarter century, and have been consuming them for the past FIFTY YEARS.  That’s a lot of masa.  I probably started helping my father make them when I was a teenager, but I don’t really remember.  It has always been a part of my life and is one of the precious few ties I have to the Mexican half of my heritage.

The tamales of my youth were made with shredded beef—tamales de carne de vaca.  My father made a few sweet ones también, adding sugar and raisins to the masa.  These were identified by wrapping a thin strip of corn husk around the tamale and tying it in a bow.  This allowed the sweet ones to be singled out of the massive population of plump tamales we produced and crowded into the steamer.

When tamales became part of my own nuclear family tradition, Lori made some innovations.  The first were the “vegetarian tamales,” stuffed with cheese and poblano chilies instead of meat.  Of course Dad’s sweet varieties were also vegetarian (vegan, in fact), but their main attraction to us niños was that they were sweet, not meatless.  Lori’s second alteration was to change the recipe from beef to pork.  We now use pork shoulder, and the results are muy delisiosos.  Finally, Lori’s most clever change had to do with our production line.  Part of the fun of this tradition is the “assembly line” mode of production.  One family member separates the soaking corn husks from a tray of cold water, the next persons applies masa to the husk and passes it on.  The third person places a dollop of seasoned meat in the center and wraps it up, and the final person situates them upright in the steamer pan. 

Traditionally, we smeared the masa onto the corn husk with a spatula.  In this way, our assembly line was uneven.  The jobs are individually quite simple, but this slow method of applying masa caused a back-up at family member número dos (picture the I Love Lucy candy wrapping on the assembly line episode.)  One year Lori had an epiphany.  Instead of struggling to plaster on the masa like some corn-based fresco food art, why not use a tortilla press?  It works like a charm.  Set a small sheet of wax paper against each face of the press, place a ball of rolled up masa in the middle, and then crank the press down.  When you open it up, you have a perfect disc of masa, ready for the corn husk.  Our assembly line is now much more quick and efficient, and Lori La Güera has a true story of how her Nordic ingenuity improved on my simple Latino labors.  She has told this story many many times.

Making tamales has its rewards and problems.  One of the problemas stems from the fact that the meat used is so delisioso that it attracts the unwanted attention of sniffing opportunists.  Remember Skippy from a previous blog?  Well, three years ago he got under the table as we prepared to start the assembly line—quietly watching and sniffing like a jackal out on the periphery of a lion kill.  He’s such a ubiquitous presence that we didn’t even notice him.  Everything was on the table; the masa, the corn husks, the steamer, and…the MEAT.  Anyway, something happened outside (snow falling?) and we had to leave for a few minutes.  Now, you’ve heard that cats have nine lives ¿verdad?  Have you heard the one about dogs having three chances?  Like the “three strikes” law, dogs should be allowed three big mistakes before being sent packing.  Skippy’s first chance was getting hit by a car and costing me hundreds of dollars.  The ordeal can be read about here in a meandering essay from an old blog (my drawing is worth a look, however.)  Skippy’s second chance took place on that Christmas of three years ago.

We came back to the dining room and stopped short in our tracks, shocked at what we beheld.  There on the table, I repeat: ON TOP of the table, was our Skippy, face buried in the bowl of tamale meat wolfing down mouthful after mouthful of too-good-for-a-dog carne.  At first we were too shocked to say anything.  But Skippy heard us and sheepishly turned his round little head in our direction. Dogs lack the same range of facial expressions as, say, a chimpanzee.  But there are a few signs of body language that are easy to spot: ears pressed back against the head to diminish size and therefore express submissiveness; eyes opened wide to gather information of potentially harmful situations; posture arched and head bowed to further the reduction in body size and reinforce submissiveness.

Skippy’s body language said it all.  If he could speak, he would have stammered something like “I know I am doing a bad thing. I could not help myself because I am a carnivore, and the aroma of the meat was too tempting.  I expect to be punished now, Master.”  Shouting must have followed, scrambling for cover, perhaps a swat or three, yelping. All I really remember is what Skippy looked like when he adopted his “I am as submissive as possible” belly-up position.  He is normally a trim little canine with an impressively thin waist.  But so greedy were his gulps of tamale meat that he was actually distended, gorged to the point of visibly changing his physique.  I’ve never seen him like that again, and hope there’s no repeat performance.  That would, sin duda, be the unforgiveable third strike.

Zafiro Añejo

Zafiro Añejo

I don’t watch a whole lot of television, but have, like millions of other clean and sober Americans, become severely addicted to Breaking Bad, the popular series about a chemistry teacher who turns to making methamphetamine when he learns he has lung cancer. All it took was one euphoric episode. Actually, I held off for several seasons before the peer pressure got to me. Knowing that the main character was a chemistry teacher, I was naturally interested in how a brother science teacher would be portrayed. But as I quickly learned, his role as a teacher became progressively irrelevant to the storyline. Part of the purpose of the Walter White character even being a teacher, I think, was to provide an unsettling juxtaposition of identities: a role model who works with our children and a manufacturer of an illicit soul-stealing blight of society all rolled up in a cancer-suffering puzzle of a man.

               

Aside from that, I found that watching BB had the nice little side benefit of having some Spanish in the script. The setting, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the fact that producing and selling meth puts one in the same arena as Mexican drug cartels, provides for occasional Spanish dialogue. Probably the two episodes with the most español are Hermanos and Salud, both from the fourth season. At this moment I feel obliged to announce SPOILER ALERT if you, by some milagro, have not yet watched BB.

Both of these episodes focus on the character of Gustavo “Gus” Fring.  For the uninitiated, Gustavo is a very charismatic bad guy—someone who shamelessly provides the poison of meth to a growing population of human refuse, but does so with such professionalism and such exquisite manners that it’s hard not to admire him to some degree (guilty pleasure # 32: grudging admiration for fictitious and murderous drug lord.) Gustavo is played by the American actor Giancarlo Esposito.  Esposito was born in Denmark to an Italian father and an African American mother while in BB he plays a mixed-race Chilean who runs a Mexican fast-food restaurant.  He’s a champion of cultural and ethnic diversity whether he’s selling you meth or pollo asado.

In Hermanos, Gus witnesses the close-up murder of his close associate (“close” in both a professional way, and in an ambiguous way that has led to much online speculation.) This occurs in a flashback from 20 years in the past and provides us viewers with a little insight into Gus’ motivations.  It also sets up the action for the Salud episode, when Gustavo makes a vengeful revisit to the Juárez Cartel.  For those who want to know the full details, watch the Fourth Season of Breaking Bad, or read the fan-page Breaking Bad Wiki. Here’s the website:  http://breakingbad.wikia.com/wiki/Zafiro_A%C3%B1ejo 

Suffice it to say that Salud brings Gustavo back to Mexico is to have a fateful meeting with fellow drug kingpin Don Eladio, for the culmination of a blood feud that was established in the Hermanos episode. The real drama starts at the 34 minute mark, when Gustavo stands by the pool in the same spot where his associate (played by James Martinez) was killed.  He opens a small pill box and takes a couple of tablets that we, later in the episode, surmise to be some sort of antidote (activated charcoal?)  When Don Eladio and his entourage of well-fed henchmen enter the scene we learn what Gustavo’s weapon of choice is.  A box with a ribbon on it rests on a nearby patio table, catching Eladio’s attention. ¿Un regalo? he asks.  He lifts an ornate bottle out of the box and spouts with admiration “Incluso la botella es una obra de arte.”

In one of the cleverest sequences I’ve ever seen, Gus uses the contents of that bottle to poison the entire cartel, reducing his competition and exacting his revenge in less than ten minutes.  It was one of those scenes I had to re-watch several times. The bottle was a liter-sized container of a fictitious tequila called zafiro añejo. Efforts were made by the producers to have some actual product placement with a real brand, but once the tequila companies learned the scene would involve imbibers dropping like moscas, they declined.  It was decided to create a BB original brand, inspired by the rare and terribly expensive 140 year old cognac called Hardy Perfection Fire.

Getting back to Spanish, more relevant to this blog than drug lords or tequila, let me reiterate that it was enjoyable to encounter its occasional use in this series.  Sometimes the phrases are spoken slowly and deliberately, as when the Mafioso-like Eladio intones “los negocios son los negocios.”  At other times, the actors are demonstrably native speakers, as when the articulate Martinez rapidly fires his lines.  Gustavo is supposed to be Chilean (although “Fring” isn’t exactly a Latin apellido.)  He does pretty well with his Spanish, though it’s obvious he is acting and experiencing some difficulty.  Then again, he’s challenged to do Spanish with a Chilean accent, so that’s perhaps another reason it sounds odd.  I’m sure I couldn’t have done any better, so I won’t criticize the actor any further.

So now, having finished all that NetFlix® has to offer at the moment, I wait with baited breath for the final eight episodes to become available.