Hi, kids! In atonement for taking so long to summarize our recent business meeting (see below!), I figured I could share a video of an extraordinary French counter-tenor, Phillipe Jarrousky. What a voice! Eet eez zee voice of an ahn-zhell...
Enjoy!
via NY Times
Dec 2, 2010
November KTC Event: Annual Meeting at William's
It was a dark and stormy night…
Well, in truth, it wasn’t that stormy, but it was indeed dark this past November 13 when we convened at our beloved William’s home for our KTC annual business meeting and tasting menu extravaganza.
Our plan was to greet each other effusively, hold our business meeting as efficiently as possible, and then dine in high style: between our delectable tasting menu of (mostly already-prepared) personalized courses and William’s fine table linens, we felt we had bragging rights to count ourselves among the snootiest diners in Seattle. Wouldn’t you agree?
Anne had prepared some delightful savory shortbread cocktail cookies for us to nosh on while we got down to business.
We did some minimal preparation for our respective dishes; notably Meg, who would be baking her tarts early to free up oven space for later. Here’s a sneak peek:
Some homemade tart shells, pre-baked, with some of the fixin’s:
And here’s the rest of the fixin’s—oh my!
William presented each of us with a perfectly-chilled glass of champagne, and asked us to determine the order in which we would serve the courses of our KTC tasting menu. Here’s the rundown:
Anne’s Tongue-Tantalizling Tomato Soup paired with Rick’s Seared Scallop Surprise
Shawn’s Put-on-the-Poundage Pork Loin Pieces paired with William’s Rapturous Rice-Cooker Risotto
Meg’s Teasingly Tasty Temptress Tarts
Jessica’s SO Scrumptious Set of Somethings (Something Chocolate and Something Pumpkin)
But first, we needed to attend to some bizzz-ness…
We got started without Joyce, who would join us later in the evening. We would also spend our evening sans Fernando, who was in Florence for a “dental conference.” Ahem.
My inner nerdy schoolgirl came barreling up to the surface squealing with glee at the sight of a flip-chart, generously provided by Meg (a flip-chart! I’m still squealing!). And I wasn't the only one. Here’s Anne, demonstrating the most appropriate method for effective page-turning:
Our brief agenda included:
Here is a brief summary of our discussions of each topic:
Learn/cook: We had a very nice discussion regarding “less is more,” i.e. it isn’t necessary or preferable to carry out an all-day marathon of cooking before sitting down to tuck into our vittles. Consensus was that we’ve somehow managed to become overly complicated regarding quantity and scope to the detriment of learning new techniques, so the group suggested some guidelines for decreasing the “hard labor” factor while increasing the “learning new stuff” and “enjoyment” factors:
Events/Trips: We decided that, barring a fabulous lottery windfall, a big travel trip (a la España this year for some of us) probably wasn’t in the cards for 2011. Nevertheless, we brainstormed several short-trip possibilities, which we will discuss more in depth during our January meeting. Some ideas:
December 12th is the date, and we’ll meet at Anne and Rick’s place.
Non-profit activities: It seems that giving back to our community by cooking together was an idea that many of us shared, and we thought of some nice ways to carry it out.
We adjourned our business at this point, and will re-convene for more business discussion in January at Joyce and Jessica’s house to make real plans for all our super-cool ideas. Now that business had been duly conducted, it was time for the evening’s most pressing and important matter: Dinner.
Damian and Frank were up first, and they ducked into the kitchen to put the finishing touches on their amazing crabcakes and to crisp them up for us. Don’t they look delish? All crab, no cake!
Meanwhile, Meg’s tarts had been happily baking away as we business’d away, and I snuck a first peek at them—they were gorgeous!
William also made some magic happen during our business meeting. We found he’d presented us all with an official menu for the evening—he’s so fancy! :) Here’s another shot of that gorgeous table:
Speaking of William, here’s one of my favorite ways to think about him: master of his domain, fully comfortable in his great armchair, glass of bubbly at the ready, and engaging us all with a fascinating tidbit:
Here’s Anne, listening with undeniably great attention:
And Rick, squarely in the middle of the sofa. <Off-topic, but slightly related, my friend Julie, whom I’ve known for 25+ years, adamantly refuses to purchase a sofa with three cushions because she insists that people always occupy only the center cushion, and that subsequently the cushion develops unsightly “ass grooves,” which Julie finds to be an off-putting quality in a sofa. I always pooh-poohed her theory… Hmmm…>
For fun, a couple more “hanging out before dinner gets started” pics (and a reminder that I need to figure out how to use our new camera! Sorry for the blurrrrr):
When the call for “Soup’s on!” came, we didn’t hesitate. We arrived at the table and found this gorgeous display awaiting us:
Look how happy we all are to see such beauty on our plates!
WOW, were those crabcakes yummy! Served atop some fresh greens and with what I’m guessing was a beurre blanc style sauce with maybe shallots (guys? Is that right?), these crabcakes didn’t have anything in the way of filler—see for yourself!
Next course was Anne and Rick’s tomato soup and scallop combination. Either of these elements could have easily stood on its own, but together they worked very nicely. The tomato soup had a kick of chipotle that offset the sweetness of the scallop really well. Yum!
The next occurrence wasn’t on our menu, but was still occasion for great delight: Joyce’s arrival!
Next up: Shawn’s chanterelle-smothered pork tenderloin and William’s amazing farro risotto. We peeped into the pots to be sure everything looked right with the risotto…
…and with the tenderloin medallions…
While we worked to plate things up, the other Kissers chatted at the table.
Et voilà!
As our post-“secondo” salad course, our next superstar was Meg’s wee tart, redolent with luxurious custard and sweet, winter squash deliciousness. Have a look:
As you may (or may not!) recall, at this point, we’d downed several bottles of wine already. As occasionally occurs, our decorum began to wilt a bit, and we all became a bit more, shall we say, “animated.”
It started innocently enough with a snappy “Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit!!” from Joyce’s end of the table. Next, during a discussion about restaurant supplies, discussion veered quickly southward at the mention of Dick’s Restaurant Supply. Witnessed during said discussion was this extraordinary photographic moment:
From here, we slid down the slippery slope of whether we were “scrunchers” or “folders.” At this, I made the executive decision to hold off on photographing my human subjects for a while. Hell, by this point, even one of Jessica’s dessert “Somethings” had acquired phallic overtones:
In the end, the voluptuousness of both dessert “Somethings” in our collective mouths was what finally shut us all up. What a magnificent finale to our meal! The best part was that Jessica recounted the story of a dessert disaster recovery that rivaled any, and after hearing her tale of woe and creativity, I was left with only a strong hope that we would be able to recreate a similar <disaster-turned-culinary-marvel> at a future time. Love. Love. Love.
Time to toast for a marvelous and perfect evening of friends, food, and fun!
Now came the most fun part of the evening: celebration and thanks to our fearless leader and all-around group smarty-pants, William. As is perfectly fit, Meg offered a toast:
We Kissers showered our dear William with some fun gifties: Best Food Writing 2010, a bottle of port from 2000 to commemorate our 10 years of kissing while cooking, and another book, Cooking with Cognac.
We left William’s dining room upside down, and besides William himself (who sure isn’t telling), the plethora of glassware will serve as sole witness to the amount of wine we consumed.
In short (or maybe “in long” would be more appropriate considering the length of this post!), a delightful evening was had by all. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at the cookie bake on Dec 12 at Rick and Anne’s place – Until then, Kissers!
OXOX
Well, in truth, it wasn’t that stormy, but it was indeed dark this past November 13 when we convened at our beloved William’s home for our KTC annual business meeting and tasting menu extravaganza.
Our plan was to greet each other effusively, hold our business meeting as efficiently as possible, and then dine in high style: between our delectable tasting menu of (mostly already-prepared) personalized courses and William’s fine table linens, we felt we had bragging rights to count ourselves among the snootiest diners in Seattle. Wouldn’t you agree?
Anne had prepared some delightful savory shortbread cocktail cookies for us to nosh on while we got down to business.
We did some minimal preparation for our respective dishes; notably Meg, who would be baking her tarts early to free up oven space for later. Here’s a sneak peek:
Some homemade tart shells, pre-baked, with some of the fixin’s:
And here’s the rest of the fixin’s—oh my!
William presented each of us with a perfectly-chilled glass of champagne, and asked us to determine the order in which we would serve the courses of our KTC tasting menu. Here’s the rundown:
Damian and Frank’s Criminally-Delicious Crabcakes
Anne’s Tongue-Tantalizling Tomato Soup paired with Rick’s Seared Scallop Surprise
Shawn’s Put-on-the-Poundage Pork Loin Pieces paired with William’s Rapturous Rice-Cooker Risotto
Meg’s Teasingly Tasty Temptress Tarts
Jessica’s SO Scrumptious Set of Somethings (Something Chocolate and Something Pumpkin)
But first, we needed to attend to some bizzz-ness…
We got started without Joyce, who would join us later in the evening. We would also spend our evening sans Fernando, who was in Florence for a “dental conference.” Ahem.
My inner nerdy schoolgirl came barreling up to the surface squealing with glee at the sight of a flip-chart, generously provided by Meg (a flip-chart! I’m still squealing!). And I wasn't the only one. Here’s Anne, demonstrating the most appropriate method for effective page-turning:
Our brief agenda included:
Learn/cook
Trips/events
Non-profit
Guests (friends, family)
Trips/events
Non-profit
Guests (friends, family)
Here is a brief summary of our discussions of each topic:
Learn/cook: We had a very nice discussion regarding “less is more,” i.e. it isn’t necessary or preferable to carry out an all-day marathon of cooking before sitting down to tuck into our vittles. Consensus was that we’ve somehow managed to become overly complicated regarding quantity and scope to the detriment of learning new techniques, so the group suggested some guidelines for decreasing the “hard labor” factor while increasing the “learning new stuff” and “enjoyment” factors:
- Consider working within a theme. Some suggested themes included:
- Essential pantry items
- 30-minute meals for “real people”
- Substitutions
- Meals with 5 ingredient maximum
- Spice field trip – buy and use
- Guest chefs
- Friends OK, but they may not want to cook when they are out of their kitchen
- Inviting any industry professional warrants discussion – we should be clear about what we want to get out of their visit before inviting them.
- Also, if we pay someone, we need to discuss in depth
- Partner switching (No, not that kind of partner-switching!). Monthly event planning doesn’t have to be done by household.
- Suggest putting names in a hat and having “new” pairs host events jointly
- “Less is more”
- Don’t have to prepare an entire meal
- Learn one single dish – this way all have a chance to learn and practice technique
- Consider practicing technique or item from previous meeting at each meeting
Events/Trips: We decided that, barring a fabulous lottery windfall, a big travel trip (a la España this year for some of us) probably wasn’t in the cards for 2011. Nevertheless, we brainstormed several short-trip possibilities, which we will discuss more in depth during our January meeting. Some ideas:
- Oregon wine country
- Salt Springs Island
- Lopez Island
- Visit Mikey/Walla Walla
- Cooking classes
- Possible to do this instead of regular monthly meeting?
- Art/craft classes
- Wine, whiskey tasting
- Cookie Bake
- Can we find an organization who might take our leftover cookies?
- Let’s limit ourselves to one variety of cookie per person this year
- Um, have we planned this yet...?
December 12th is the date, and we’ll meet at Anne and Rick’s place.
Non-profit activities: It seems that giving back to our community by cooking together was an idea that many of us shared, and we thought of some nice ways to carry it out.
- Cooking for other people
“Other people” was loosely defined as anyone we know or know of who may be having a difficult time. Folks who are in treatment for cancer, women with difficult pregnancies, folks who are providing near-nonstop care for their aging elders, someone who has just lost a loved one, or any person who just generally could use a hand. We could help make their days easier and help nourish their hearts by nourishing their bodies.
- Ronald McDonald House
This organization houses families of sick children from out of town who are receiving treatment for life-threatening or terminal illnesses at Children’s Hospital. Reportedly, many families take great solace simply from having a home-cooked meal available to them, and RMHC has a program available in which volunteers come in and cook for the families. Some concerns from our KTC group included the time commitment involved, but general consensus was that cooking for a very large group would be a valuable skill to learn and practice. Shawn is obtaining more details, and will share when we next meet.
**********
We adjourned our business at this point, and will re-convene for more business discussion in January at Joyce and Jessica’s house to make real plans for all our super-cool ideas. Now that business had been duly conducted, it was time for the evening’s most pressing and important matter: Dinner.
Damian and Frank were up first, and they ducked into the kitchen to put the finishing touches on their amazing crabcakes and to crisp them up for us. Don’t they look delish? All crab, no cake!
Meanwhile, Meg’s tarts had been happily baking away as we business’d away, and I snuck a first peek at them—they were gorgeous!
William also made some magic happen during our business meeting. We found he’d presented us all with an official menu for the evening—he’s so fancy! :) Here’s another shot of that gorgeous table:
Speaking of William, here’s one of my favorite ways to think about him: master of his domain, fully comfortable in his great armchair, glass of bubbly at the ready, and engaging us all with a fascinating tidbit:
Here’s Anne, listening with undeniably great attention:
And Rick, squarely in the middle of the sofa. <Off-topic, but slightly related, my friend Julie, whom I’ve known for 25+ years, adamantly refuses to purchase a sofa with three cushions because she insists that people always occupy only the center cushion, and that subsequently the cushion develops unsightly “ass grooves,” which Julie finds to be an off-putting quality in a sofa. I always pooh-poohed her theory… Hmmm…>
For fun, a couple more “hanging out before dinner gets started” pics (and a reminder that I need to figure out how to use our new camera! Sorry for the blurrrrr):
When the call for “Soup’s on!” came, we didn’t hesitate. We arrived at the table and found this gorgeous display awaiting us:
Look how happy we all are to see such beauty on our plates!
WOW, were those crabcakes yummy! Served atop some fresh greens and with what I’m guessing was a beurre blanc style sauce with maybe shallots (guys? Is that right?), these crabcakes didn’t have anything in the way of filler—see for yourself!
Next course was Anne and Rick’s tomato soup and scallop combination. Either of these elements could have easily stood on its own, but together they worked very nicely. The tomato soup had a kick of chipotle that offset the sweetness of the scallop really well. Yum!
The next occurrence wasn’t on our menu, but was still occasion for great delight: Joyce’s arrival!
Next up: Shawn’s chanterelle-smothered pork tenderloin and William’s amazing farro risotto. We peeped into the pots to be sure everything looked right with the risotto…
…and with the tenderloin medallions…
While we worked to plate things up, the other Kissers chatted at the table.
As our post-“secondo” salad course, our next superstar was Meg’s wee tart, redolent with luxurious custard and sweet, winter squash deliciousness. Have a look:
As you may (or may not!) recall, at this point, we’d downed several bottles of wine already. As occasionally occurs, our decorum began to wilt a bit, and we all became a bit more, shall we say, “animated.”
It started innocently enough with a snappy “Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit!!” from Joyce’s end of the table. Next, during a discussion about restaurant supplies, discussion veered quickly southward at the mention of Dick’s Restaurant Supply. Witnessed during said discussion was this extraordinary photographic moment:
From here, we slid down the slippery slope of whether we were “scrunchers” or “folders.” At this, I made the executive decision to hold off on photographing my human subjects for a while. Hell, by this point, even one of Jessica’s dessert “Somethings” had acquired phallic overtones:
In the end, the voluptuousness of both dessert “Somethings” in our collective mouths was what finally shut us all up. What a magnificent finale to our meal! The best part was that Jessica recounted the story of a dessert disaster recovery that rivaled any, and after hearing her tale of woe and creativity, I was left with only a strong hope that we would be able to recreate a similar <disaster-turned-culinary-marvel> at a future time. Love. Love. Love.
Time to toast for a marvelous and perfect evening of friends, food, and fun!
Now came the most fun part of the evening: celebration and thanks to our fearless leader and all-around group smarty-pants, William. As is perfectly fit, Meg offered a toast:
We Kissers showered our dear William with some fun gifties: Best Food Writing 2010, a bottle of port from 2000 to commemorate our 10 years of kissing while cooking, and another book, Cooking with Cognac.
We left William’s dining room upside down, and besides William himself (who sure isn’t telling), the plethora of glassware will serve as sole witness to the amount of wine we consumed.
In short (or maybe “in long” would be more appropriate considering the length of this post!), a delightful evening was had by all. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at the cookie bake on Dec 12 at Rick and Anne’s place – Until then, Kissers!
OXOX
Oct 26, 2010
October KTC Event: Tamales at Shawn & Fernando's
Not even two full weeks after the festivities at Julie and Brad’s house, we Kissers met again – Woo!
During a brief rest, Rick requested the “stallion” wine charm. Only later did we point out that it was actually a unicorn. His incredulous response: “A UNICORN?!?!?!”
Variations of this process were used for the next couple of hours. Here’s what everything looked like on the stove:
Extra-cool BONUS bonus: Here's another cumbia video if you want to see how they dance with the candle. This guy doesn't dance that well, but the lady "tiene el ritmo perfecto," that is, she has the rhythm down perfectly and dances very well. An enthusiastic double-thumbs-up from Fernando. Did I mention my billowy-skirt-envy?
By then, dinner was ready to serve. We ushered everyone towards the dining room and plated the avocado crema, topping it with a bit of fresh Dungeness crab and Mexican sour cream:
In honor of the rapidly-approaching holiday season, Shawn and Fernando decided to throw a “tamalada,” or party to make tamales. Whether you call them tamales, hallacas, envueltos, nacatamales, montucas, humitas, or pamonhas, these small packets of steamed cornmeal deliciousness are always prepared during the Christmas season in most of Latin America.
Tamales are typically prepared in this group or party-type setting (Yay!), but preparing them is typically a process that required at least two full days (Boo!). As such, Shawn spent time Friday doing some behind-the-scenes work for Saturday’s KTC event, including:
- Carefully trimming a gorgeous 7-pound pork shoulder (we saved those porky strips of pure white fat – lentils, here we come!
- Slow-cooking said pork shoulder for a few hours (thanks, Crock Pot!)
- Boiling a chicken for a couple of hours (Schmaltz! Anne, you forgot to take it with you!)
- Shredding both pork and chicken into steamy piles of meaty goodness
- Roasting poblano peppers over the gas burners
- Peeling the peppers (super easy after roasting them, just pop the still-hot peppers into a sealed container to steam for a few minutes and the skin will peel right off!)
- Making and then reducing an anise-seed infusion (for the Oaxacan-style tamales)
Whew!
Then came the hardest and most taxing part: finding containers for storing the gallons of pork and chicken cooking liquids for use in the tamales the next day. Shawn and Fernando filled Pyrex salad bowls, jars, yogurt containers, and even pots. I just wish we’d thought to take a photo of the jam-packed fridge—it was really something to see!
Ever wonder what 5 quarts of broth topped with a little bowl of chicken fat looks like? Well, wonder no longer! This was only about 25% of what we actually put into the fridge the night before:
Fortunately, once Saturday rolled around, everything was ready to roll. Our friends Stan and Beata were visiting us for the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so we had quite the team assembled to get things rolling. We all had a late light breakfast and put out little packets of recipes we’d selected and printed to serve as our guides. Stan and Beata helped us organize some snacks for everyone. It seems we didn’t manage to get a snapshot of the extraordinary watermelon radishes we found, but here’s a photo from the fun food blog, The Kitchn. I found these at Whole Foods, and will definitely look for them again! Yum!
People began arriving and we poured wine and discussed “the plan:” We had four different kinds of tamales we wanted to try and make (click through for recipes):
- Traditional pork
- Rajas con queso (rajas are slices of poblano chiles)
- Oaxacan black bean and pumpkin
- Tamales dulces de uvas pasas (sweet raisin tamales)
We had a LOT to do before dinner, so we put a bunch of corn husks in hot water to soak and stuck a couple of dinner plates on top to weigh them down and hold them underwater. It was time for us to get the tamale party started.
Masa began a-mixing…
We sliced roasted poblano peppers…
Rick combined the shredded meats with a pile o’ salt and spices…
We cut queso oaxaqueño into pieces and readied the chipotle peppers…
It was also about this time that we realized that the plates we had placed on top of the corn husks to hold them underwater were not heavy enough to keep all the husks submerged. Ever-resourceful, Fernando disappeared for a few moments into his Man-Cave downstairs and returned with a pair of bright green 5-pound weights.
We hesitated for a teeny bit as we considered the germ factor involved with sticking pieces of exercise equipment right on top of our corn husks. Finally, we reasoned that the tamales would steam for a couple of hours, which would kill any germs anyway, and we plunked them into the water bath on top of the plates. Their weight atop of the plates worked like a charm to keep the corn husks hydrated and softening.
< A photo would have been fun to add here, but I just didn’t manage to take very many at this meeting! >
Back to the cooking action...Jessica whirred some black beans, the anise infusion, and some other goodies in the blender for the pumpkin tamales…
And then reduced the puree…
Anne mixed up masa for the pork tamales…
And once the corn husks were soft, we got to work spreading them with the masa mix…
And adding a bit of meat…
Then rolling them up into steamably-extraordinary little packages!
After a while, we had a sort of assembly line going…
Here’s a very instructional video of Fernando showing us how it’s done:
And, just for fun, here's another video of how Julia Child might show us how it's done:
Once each tamal was rolled, it was placed in a steamer basket insert where it would be steamed. We used the “place the steamer on its side and stack ‘em” method…
Now that the most intimidating part of dinner was steaming away, it was time to organize the sides and dessert. We figured the tamales would be heavy and starchy enough on their own, so didn’t want to add any additional heavy or starchy dishes to the menu.
With that in mind, we had decided on a cold avocado crema or cold soup to start, and a simple salad of jícama and
First up, the salad. We had a couple of recipes to base ideas on, and Rick got to chopping:
Next was the avocado crema. We sliced…
Then blended…What a lovely springtime color!
We mixed up the egg whites for the pavlova and got it into the oven. By that time, we were pooped out! Joyce took a breather…
William requested some lively salsa music to wake us all up and contribute to the mood.
I can’t quite recall what began the discussion, but we poked around on the iPod to find a traditional cumbia song.
CUMBIA is the most typical music of the northern coast of Colombia, African in its musical origin. It’s more complex than it looks, and has a particular style to the steps. It’s said that the shuffling smoothness to the short steps in this dance are attributed to the fact that, in the olden days, slaves wore shackles which prevented them from moving their feet in any other way except to use a short, shuffling step. The dance is performed barefoot, and often with a candle.
The man represents the African slave, making romantic overtures to an indigenous woman. Spanish influence can be noted in the traditional dress of both. The candle is used by the woman to illuminate the scene and to “defend” herself against the man’s advances if the need should arise. Musically, think heavy African drums, a rattle-producing maraca or guiro, and reedy, breathy indigenous flutes. There is also an indigenous instrument similar to a bagpipe (called gaita) which is used for the cumbia.
Back to our short break in the tamale action-packed kitchen. I ran to the closet and pulled out my almost-new falda cumbiambera and zipped myself in for a (very) impromptu, (very) amateur demonstration of the cumbia in our (very full of tamales) kitchen. Fernando describes the way he began teaching me how to move the cumbia skirt: by tying a blanket around himself in lieu of a billowing skirt. Our quick-thinking friend Stan, in a brilliant flash of genius, thought to grab the camera and preserve the moment for posterity:
This was the closest thing to an action shot we got, but it still looks like it was pretty fun.
Here’s a video if you want to check out real cumbiamberos dancing this traditional dance. The sound quality is iffy, but Fernando gave this particular video a general thumbs-up. He said that these folks have a more “showy” style than what you might typically see (after all, it is a performance of some type), but he says that both dancers are pretty good. After watching, I developed a heavy case of billowy-skirt-envy.
Extra-cool added bonus: I LOVE when my kitchen looks like this--Don't you agree that this is the way kitchens are supposed to look? All full of happy, smiley people?
Extra-cool BONUS bonus: Here's another cumbia video if you want to see how they dance with the candle. This guy doesn't dance that well, but the lady "tiene el ritmo perfecto," that is, she has the rhythm down perfectly and dances very well. An enthusiastic double-thumbs-up from Fernando. Did I mention my billowy-skirt-envy?
By then, dinner was ready to serve. We ushered everyone towards the dining room and plated the avocado crema, topping it with a bit of fresh Dungeness crab and Mexican sour cream:
We were all ready to enjoy our meal!
Seems none of us captured a photo of the dozens and dozens of tamales we’d prepared, but here’s an opened pair of tamales next to our improvised jícama salad:
We did manage make a small dent in those dozens, as evidenced here by the pile of discarded husks…
Dessert followed, and looked charming!
We plated it up…Doesn’t it look sweet?
Once we’d finished for the night, we packaged up all the leftovers for folks to take home (tamales freeze beautifully). In spite of handing out at least a dozen to each home, we still ended up with several dozen left over. Breakfast, anyone?
We actually DID have them for breakfast, and they were great. Actually, waaaay worse than having tons of leftover tamales was that we forgot to remind folks to take broth and schmaltz and lovely chunks of pork fat! Boo!
Bonus observation:
In providing several recipes, our hope was that folks would say “Hey, recipe A includes monkey brains, and recipe B doesn’t – but I like monkey brains, so maybe I’ll try adding some monkey brains to recipe B also!” However, it seemed really challenging for folks to get away from following the recipes exactly, and we didn’t see much mixing-and-matching going on. Our menfolk Stan and Fernando (!) discussed feeling like we hadn’t experimented enough (Would pork be good to add to the black bean and pumpkin tamales? What would a sweet tamal taste like if it were steamed in banana leaves? Would orange champagne vinegar work to brighten the avocado crema?).
This could have been related to simply having a compressed timeline for preparation or to having information overload, but I thought it was a useful observation - Something for us to consider in the coming year, perhaps?
Many, many thanks (and ¡muchas gracias!)to all for a successful and Maseca-fueled evening! See you at William’s on the 13th!
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