What To Eat With Tamales?

My earlier blog tells about the origin of tamales and how to eat one, but if you want to make a supper party featuring tamales you might need some guidelines for a menu. A traditional meal in here in Mexico, the ancestral homeland of the tamale, is an accompaniment of Pinto beans (frijoles). Black beans would work well too. Where I grew up in New Mexico this meal would also include a simple tossed green salad with tomato, lettuce, a chopped avocado, some onion and oil and vinegar dressing. You would want to have a tomato salsa on the side to put on the beans. I would add a loaf of garlic bread as well. Lemon meringue pie would be my Mother’s pick to serve for dessert; I would probably have brownies with ice cream.

Pinto beans are to the Southwest what Boston baked beans are to the East Coast. In the 1930’s when my Mother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Rocky Arroyo, New Mexico, she boarded with local ranchers. Their supper every evening was Pinto beans (without the tamales), served with fried salt pork, blackstrap molasses and sourdough bread. The beans were topped with canned tomatoes and fresh sliced onions. It is a simple meal and quite nutritious as well. Someone who didn’t grow up eating this kind of food might think it sounds awful or boring, but for me it is comfort food.

Colorado is lucky to have Adobe Milling, a grower of Pinto beans and Anasazi beans. When we are in town we bring back lots of bags of Anasazi beans that we get at King Soopers Market. They are also available from Adobe Milling on the internet. These beans have an interesting history. They are a 1,500 year old variety: the popular story behind their modern origin is unusual. In the 1980's a member of an archeological team from UCLA was looking for remains of Pygmy elephants that roamed the earth thousands of years ago in New Mexico and came upon these beans. The beans were in a clay pot sealed with pine tar and were determined by radio carbon dating to be over 1,500 years old, yet some still germinated and it is from those that we today can share the harvest of heirloom beans of ancient Americans! The beans are a beautiful splotched brown and white that taste a lot like Pinto beans but more buttery. When they are cooked they look alike.

I grew up eating Pinto beans at least once a week. My father always cooked beans with salt pork, and some people like to use ham hocks, but I tell you if you have never had beans cooked just for themselves you are missing out on a fabulous low fat meal. I consider Esperando to be a master bean cooker. Here is his recipe (--first a word of caution, we like our beans really garlicky so cut back on the garlic if that is not for you).


Esperando's Pinto Beans

2 c Pinto beans
1 bay leaf
1 T epizote (available at specialty Mexican markets and maybe Whole Foods)
1 T oregano
1 T thyme
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 T coarse ground black pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
6 cloves minced garlic
2 T salt

Pick over the beans (now and then a rock gets in there, great for tooth cracking!) and rinse them under water. Put everything except the salt together in pot, bring to boil and simmer for 3-5 hours until done, add salt at the last. Beans can also be prepared the night ahead by covering with boiling water and letting sit overnight shortening the cooking time the next day to 2 hours. They can also be cooked all day in a slow cooker. Beans should be cooked until they are completely soft and a few are showing signs of falling apart. This same recipe works for black beans as well.

Side Salsa
2 large ripe tomatoes
1 yellow onion
1 c packed fresh cilantro
1 serrano chile, stemed, seeded and finely minced
1 tsp salt
1 T olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon or lime

Put in food processor and process until pieces are bean sized.

Now you can have a tamale party! Buen aprovecho!

How to eat a tamale, really!

Tamales Santa Rosalia Style shown below

It surprised me to know a lot of my readers want to know how to eat a tamale. If you want to know what to eat with a tamale, click on this entry. Otherwise herein I will tell you exactly how to eat a tamale since it strikes me that there might be people out there in the world that have never seen, much less eaten a tamale. How sad! Or having been presented with one, they didn’t have some perceived etiquette down pat. I can’t keep them in suspense any longer.

Tamales are an ancient food. They were probably invented by the Mexican people (as in Aztecs or Mesoamericans) and now days follow a southerly flow from the southwest USA through Mexico down to Central and South America. No one knows for sure when or who invented the tamale, but we do know tamales have been written about since pre-Columbian days. In the 1550's, the Aztecs served the Spaniards tamales during their visits to Mexico. The tamale changes its name, appearance and flavor in each country until it gets to Chile where it loses any resemblance to a real tamale but just becomes a lump of masa without any filling. This story is not about those other tamales, but about the ones you find in Mexico and the southwest USA.

Tamales are a labor of love. They are generally made in larger batches of say 12 dozen or more if someone is selling them, or 3 to 6 dozen if made for one's family. They seem to cost about the same if you buy them from someone no matter what country you live in. In Mexico, they are the food of choice for any fiesta, celebration or holiday, but are available everywhere in the Mexican-American world all year long if you ask around. In the US if you are buying tamales you generally buy a dozen at a time, but in Mexico they are not sold by the dozen; you can buy any number without regard to dozens. I don’t know why.

I grew up in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where my mother bought tamales from Manuela who took orders and made up batches for her devotees in her own home. Here in Colorado we can get delicious tamales, the hottest spiciest ones I’ve ever eaten that are sold by some Latin women from their coolers outside the Mexican super markets on Federal Blvd.; in Taos, New Mexico, Abe’s Cantina and Cocina in Arroyo Seco has the best tamales in the world because of their unparalleled masa. Eat a tamale in El Paso, Texas or Tucson, Arizona and it will be different yet again. In Santa Rosalia the tamales have two olives in them (watch out for the pits!) as they do often once you cross the border and keep on going south. US tamales tend to be spicier, those in Mexico more bland but tasty.

It usually takes about 2 whole days to make them with helpers. No one would make them by themselves--they would be crazy, it is so much work. At least two or three or more people are involved in an assembly production of these delectable morsels. Often the tamale filling is made the day ahead from the pig’s head, beef ribs or roasts, and of both dark and light meat of the chicken. The meats are not mixed together; you would buy pork (mine and Esperando's favorites), beef or chicken tamales. Regionally there are sweet tamales with no meat or tamales cooked in banana leaves, but they fall outside of scope of my treatise. The meat is boiled until it falls off the bones and then whatever seasoning, such as red or green chile sauce, or broth with spices is added to it so that you have a rather saucy wet filling. Masa (a dough) is made from nixtamal (very finely ground corn meal) mixed with lard and some of the broth from the meat. The masa is spread to about ½ inch upon corn husks that have first been soaked in hot water. Next a generous spoonful of filling is placed on the masa and it is rolled up cigarette style, so the filling is encased in the masa, and the husks keep it all wrapped together, the ends of the husks are folded over or tied with strips of husk. The tamales are carefully packed into a large pot to steam for 2 hours or more.

But how do you eat them you ask? That is the best and easiest part. The tamales have already been cooked when you purchase them, so you steam them covered in a basket for 7-10 minutes or so, it doesn’t take long, just a little longer if they have been frozen. Or, you can microwave a tamale on high for 1 minute. Take them out—be careful they are really hot! Unroll the husk carefully so the tamale stays whole. Throw the husk away, sliding the tamale onto your plate (or move the husk to the side of your plate if there is no where to toss it) and eat it with a fork. Some people like to pour red or green chile sauce or salsa on top, but if they are great tamales that is not necessary. There are plenty of bad or so-so tamales out there, but nothing can beat the taste of a great tamale. For those wanting to know even more Gourmet Sleuth has alot more details.

How to eat tamales in February

The Christmas season in Mexico has been a wonderful long season of religious based customs enfolding the community which we have participated in second hand. The first part of this is Las Posadas which we are told is celebrated much more in mainland Mexico than here in Baja. It generally involves an extended family group, with part of the group representing the Virgin and St. Joseph outside at night with candles seeking room at the inn musically through the verses of a traditional Christmas carol. For their part the innkeeper group rejects their entreaties several times before letting them into the house, where the party continues with food, drink and piñata breaking. This kicks the season off on December 16.

Today we participated in the end of the Mexican Christmas celebration. Today is El Día de los Reyes or Epiphany (the last day of Christmas) and the day “we three kings of orient are” i.e., Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar, representing Europe, Arabia, and Africa, arrived on horse, camel and elephant, bringing respectively gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. Here, as in many parts of the world, this is celebrated by eating a Three King’s cake. While in France with the Oldest Daughter, Esperando ate the galette des Rois. This is a kind of cake with a trinket or a bean hidden inside. The person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket becomes "king" for a day.

Here in Mexico our Three King’s cake is called a rosca, which is defined in my Spanish dictionary as a pastry ring. Well it was a large pastry ring of a kind of mild fruit cake (not unlike a hot cross bun in flavor) with five baby Jesus’ baked into it. We had about 15 to 20 people at Esperando’s office who all came to have some cake. The trick is each person has to slice their own piece and if the knife cuts into a Baby Jesus or He is in the piece you get, then on February 2 you along with the other four chumps are responsible for bringing enough tamales to fed the same 15 to 20 people. Along with the cake we were served champurrado, a sort of a hot chocolate beverage which is made from maseca which is dough for flour tortillas which you then brown in a skillet (which thickens the beverage); milk; Mexican hot chocolate (a 3-inch round flat disk about ½-inch thick composed of chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and ground almonds); and cocoa. The result is kind of a thickened hot chocolate that is not so sweet, but interesting and tasty.

February 2 (tamale D-day) is the Feast of Candelaria or Candlemas which is the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. We were told by our assembled partygoers that the best place to buy tamales for this important day is in front of the church where a wholesale tamale undertaking is going on. I claimed one of the Baby Jesus’. I don’t know who organizes the tamale purchasing but I guess I will find out. Good grief!! A really excellent excuse to break the new diet and a validation for eating tamales to boot!!

If you want to know how to eat a tamale, click here.