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.
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