Today at Broken Spanish, Garcia introduces me to an intriguing new filling: braised lamb neck. Plated on a cast iron dish and topped with more filling, the humble ingredients are gorgeous to behold and truly extraordinary to eat.
A labor intensive process, tamal-making has been a social event led by women since pre-colonial times. Today the tamalada rekindles the ritual of women gathering in the kitchen to make something cherished throughout the holidays. The many hands required for the assembly line is a great excuse for family and friends to get together—which is, after all, what the holiday season is all about.
For many Latin American families living in the United States, these portable foods are a taste of home. She would prepare the pork with red chile filling while his grandfather took charge of the physically demanding task of mixing the masa. Young Garcia was relegated to counting corn husks and laying them out. Although today he recognizes this was busy work——a way to help him feel important and included.
But maybe that anticipation made them even more exciting and delicious. Garcia and his Argentinian wife plan on carrying on the tradition with their own young son. The idea of a tamal with an olive an ingredient native to the Mediterranean is part of a larger story—the influence of colonization and immigration on Mexican cuisine.
Adopting new food traditions and connecting them to the past brings into question the big ideas of authenticity and innovation. Garcia is a native Angeleno. He adds that some people might question whether this can be considered truly Mexican food. I try to challenge that idea of tradition and authentic as being limiting labels. Anything that somebody does repeatedly over time with a certain impact can be considered a tradition—good or bad.
Corn was so significant in pre-Colonial Mexico that according to the Popol Vuh , the Mayan book of creation, humans were created from masa. The Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs all worshipped maize gods and goddesses and ate tamales as a form of religious communion, and tamales were served at agricultural rituals and ceremonies.
Naturally, during the conquest, Spaniards supplanted the corn with wheat, which had similar religious connotations for them, as the crop of choice as part of Catholic evangelization. Yet ironically, tamales are eaten during the Christmas holidays—a Christian celebration—all over Latin America. So what happened? Well, old habits die hard. Even though corn was thought of as inferior to wheat in colonial Mexico, tamales were still considered nutritious and delicious by people from all walks of life.
And the holidays—which for Mexicans extend from the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12 through Three Kings Day on January 6 with tamales served throughout—were the perfect time for them.
Tamales are still eaten with gusto around the holidays thousands of miles from their country of origin and with centuries of cultural adaptation and assimilation. Correction: We have changed singular version of tamales from tamale to tamal. Read: A briefing on eating tamales.
While Mexican Americans in the Southwest often opt for corn-husk-wrapped tamales, those from Central America typically wrap theirs in banana leaves. Those game for the herculean task of making them often require an entire team to help assemble them, says Erika Stanley, a chef from Dallas who grew up in Costa Rica making tamales with her family.
Each person was assigned a different role: preparing the masa, cooking a variety of meat fillings, softening up the banana leaves, carefully wrapping each tamal, and monitoring them as they cooked. And if you make tamales, you make a lot of them, Stanley says, remembering that her family often ate them from December to January. And you need to find your tamal dealer well in advance—many people start taking orders around Thanksgiving, and those who are late to the game are left behind.
Thanksgiving tamales have to be ordered by November 1 and Christmas ones by December 1, he says, and any extras are available on a first-come, first-served basis. One of the best parts of the job for him, he says, is how many different people he gets to meet on a day-to-day basis.
While Stanley mostly cooks tamales for her network of Latino friends and family, Rodriguez says that his clientele—white, black, Latino, Asian—reflects the diversity of San Antonio. They are becoming a part of the food culture and the lives and communities.
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