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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