Tamales are one of the best foods known to man — and one of the oldest.

In Pre-Hispanic Cooking, Ana M. de Benitez cites Fray Bernadino de Sahagún — source of an authoritative first-person account of Spain's conquest of Mexico — who wrote that the gentlemen of the Aztec court ate tamales. Another citation on Wikipedia.com notes that tamales have been made in the Americas for 5,000 years. One thing is clear, however: The marriage of corn and lard in a tamale is a happy one, and that couldn't happen until the Spaniards arrived in the New World with their pigs.

Ubiquitous in Latin America, and ranging in size from the tiny, sweet finger-sized bites to the three-foot or longer Queen's Arm, tamales are the ultimate grab-and-go treat. In Central America, entire chicken legs, bones and skin included, come embedded in masa and wrapped in banana leaves. In parts of rural Oaxaca, the leaves of wild plants flavor tamale masa.

Tamales are also part of life in the historical areas settled by Spain in the United States. (Strangely enough, they have also made their way into cultures where they don't seem to belong, turning up bland and canned on supermarkets shelves next to the roast beef hash in the Midwest.) In New Mexico, tamales are a natural — part of our cultural heritage.

Getting together with family and friends in the weeks before Christmas to make tamales — called a tamalada — is an old New Mexico tradition. But the warmth of steamy rooms filled with savory smells, chismes (gossip) and laughter, with children running in and out, is in danger of becoming only a memory. Once a way of combining work with socializing — like quilting bees, harvesting crops and barn-raisings — making tamales has become a specialized knowledge and something that many people find too time-consuming. Easy access to relatively cheap, commercially-prepared frozen tamales also has cut into traditional tamale-making at home.

My daughter-in-law and my son love tamales and had been urging me to teach them how to make them, so last weekend we had a tamalada. By the time we finished, we were exhausted but euphoric. We worked late the first evening to cook the meats and sauces for the fillings and spent the best part of the second day making masa and assembling and cooking the tamales. But the tamales were wonderful — far better than anything we could buy in a store.

Our experience proved two things to us: The best tamales are still made at home, and the tamalada is by far the best way to make them.

Keeping it fresh

Tamales are not difficult to make, they just take a long time. They don't have to be perfectly assembled, either. In fact, in a room of five tamale makers, there will be five different versions because tamales are handmade and express individuality. One person prefers the masa, and so puts it on with a heavy hand. Another favors the filling, so his or her tamales are filled to overflowing with meat. Some like to spread the masa across the entire leaf, so when you open the tamale there are thin sheets of masa separated from the rest of the tamale. No matter how they are formed, though, they are all delicious.

However, ingredients do make a difference, and your tamales will only be as good as the quality of the masa, lard and filling you use.

Lard is an important flavoring element of tamales, and the better the lard, the better the tamale. In spite of the public campaign against it, lard contains less than half the cholesterol and less than one-third the saturated fat of butter. Remember the rule about fats that solidify at room temperature being the least healthy? The best lard to use to make tamales is the kind that can be poured!

If you don't want to make your own lard, buy it from a Mexican butcher; it will come in a plastic tub and be labeled manteca de cerdo (pig fat). It's made from rendered pork for chicharrones (crunchy pork rind), and it has a toasty, deliciously browned aroma and flavor. Commercially packaged lard (in the blue cartons or pails) is bleached and hydrogenated to make it more solid, white and stable; it doesn't have a good flavor and should be avoided.

The second important component in tamales is the dough made from ground corn — the masa. Many people use dried instant masa, labeled sin prepare (unprepared), but I prefer freshly cooked and ground corn. It's called masa para tamales and you can buy it at a cordillera or Mexican grocery. Masa para tamales is made from posole and ground more coarsely than the dough used for corn tortillas.

Use whole red-chile pods to make the sauce; if you can buy chiles from local farmers from Chimayó or Velarde, your chile will be even more flavorful.

Luckily, in Santa Fe, it's easy to find great ingredients for tamales. You can find masa, manteca de cerdo and hojas (corn husks) for tamales at Alicia's Tortilleria, 1314 Rufina Circle, Suite A-5 (across from Santa Fe Greenhouses) and at El Paisano 3140 Cerrillos Road (in the Plaza Princessa Shopping Center).

I encourage you to take time to enjoy family and friends, gather together in the kindred spirit of good food and tradition, and host a tamalada of your own.





Day 1:

Prepare red-chile sauce

Cook pork and prepare for filling

Prepare tomatillo sauce

Cook chicken and prepare for filling

Combine sauces, chicken and meats to make fillings and refrigerate

Refrigerate remaining sauce and pork broth



Day 2:

Bring masa, lard, butter and broth to cool room temperature

Soak hojas

Prepare masa

Assemble tamales

Steam tamales

Cool, bag and refrigerate or freeze tamales




These recipes will make 60 pork tamales, 60 chicken tamales and 60 small, sweet tamales. To make them, you will need to buy 5 cups lard, 9 pounds prepared masa for tamales and 2 pounds #1 hojas (corn husks) IN ADDITION to the other ingredients listed for each type of tamale.

For easiest preparation, cook the pork and chicken and make the sauces the day before you plan to assemble the tamales. The extra resting time allows the fat in the pork and chicken broth to separate and solidify.

RED CHILE PORK FILLING

For the red-chile sauce:
20 whole New Mexico dried red-chile pods
1 onion, peeled and halved
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

Seed and stem chiles and rinse thoroughly. Put in a large saucepan with water to cover, add the onion and the garlic cloves, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes. Let cool to lukewarm. Take half the chiles, onion and garlic cloves out of the water with a slotted spoon and transfer to a blender jar. Add 1 teaspoon salt. Blend until smooth with enough of the chile water to make a sauce the consistency of thin gravy. Strain chile if desired. Reserve sauce and repeat with remaining chiles. Refrigerate sauce until you are ready to add it to the pork.

For the pork:
4-5 pound pork shoulder roast
2 bay leaves
Salt to taste

Cook pork roast with bay leaves in generously salted water to cover until the meat is falling off the bone. (If you have a pressure cooker, this is a great way to cook the meat; it will take about 45 minutes. On top of the stove, it will take several hours on a low simmer.)

Pour broth in which you cooked the pork into a container and set it aside. Remove fat and bone from roast, shredding as you go, and stir in all but a pint of the red-chile sauce. Refrigerate meat and chile mixture. Refrigerate broth in a separate container without removing fat.

GREEN CHILE CHICKEN FILLING

For the tomatillo sauce:
2 pounds tomatillos, husked and cut in halves or quarters
2 white onions, peeled and sliced
6 jalapeños, stemmed and sliced, fewer or more to taste (serrano chiles may be substituted)
6 large garlic cloves
2 teaspoons salt
1 bunch cilantro

Put tomatillos, onions, jalapeños, garlic and salt in a saucepan and add enough water just to cover ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until tomatillos are softened, about 10 minutes. Cool to lukewarm, then blend in two batches with the cilantro. Add salt to the tomatillo sauce. Refrigerate any sauce not to be used in the chicken filling in the recipe below.

For the chicken:
5 pounds chicken quarters or thighs
Salt, if needed

Pressure-cook chicken with enough tomatillo sauce to cover. Begin timing for 15 to 20 minutes once it comes to pressure. (Alternately, simmer chicken in salsa on top of the stove in a covered pot until it's falling off the bone.)

Remove chicken from sauce. Cool and refrigerate sauce. Separate meat from bones. Discard chicken bones and skin and combine meat with the sauce that has NOT been used for cooking the chicken, stirring to shred meat.


Remove the lard, butter, pork broth and masa from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature. When they are the correct temperature, prepare the masa as directed below.

Make two batches of masa for the recipe for Red Chile Pork Tamales and two batches of masa for Green Chile Chicken Tamales — unless you have a large commercial mixer that can handle four pounds of masa at a time. If you have such a large, heavy-duty mixer, double the recipe for each filling and make just one batch for each type of tamale.

MASA FOR SAVORY TAMALES

1-1/4 cups cool room temperature lard (use the solidified fat from the refrigerated pork broth to supplement purchased lard)
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste (if the broth is salty, use less salt making the masa)
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 pounds fresh masa for tamales

For Red Chile Pork Tamales:
3/4 cup room-temperature reserved pork broth
3/4 cup room-temperature red-chile sauce

For Green Chile Chicken Tamales:
1-1/2 cups of the reserved salsa in which the chicken was cooked (at room temperature)

Whip the lard and the baking powder in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy, about a minute. Add crumbled masa a little at a time, and beat until thoroughly blended, about a minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice during mixing.

If you are making Red Chile Pork Tamales, add the pork broth and beat the masa on high speed for a minute.

If making Green Chile Chicken Tamales, add 3/4 cup of the reserved salsa and beat on high speed for a minute.

Put a piece of masa the size of a pea in a glass of cold water. If it floats, add the red-chile sauce to the masa for the pork tamale recipe, or the rest of the reserved salsa for the chicken tamale recipe. Beat for another minute.

(If the masa did not float, beat it for another minute or two and retest before continuing. This step is essential to creating light dough.)

When the masa is finished, put it in a storage bowl and refrigerate for an hour for the lightest tamales.

Prepare a second batch of masa the same way.


Although the idea of sweet tamales is odd to some, they are delicious and infinitely variable. We've made sweet tamales with different combinations of cocoa powder, piñon nuts, raisins, pineapple purée, nuts, dried apricots and chocolate chips; in Mexico, they sell pink tamales flavored with strawberries. The flavors in this recipe were selected by committee the day of our tamalada.

My Mexican friends invariably say that they like sweet tamales best warmed in the husk on a hot comal accompanied by a cup of hot coffee.

MASA FOR SWEET TAMALES

5 ounces cool room temperature butter
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Heaping 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 pound prepared masa for tamales
1/2 cup unsweetened apple butter or apple sauce
1/2 cup chopped Rainier dried sweet cherries
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup sweetened coconut

Whip the butter, salt and baking powder for about a minute, until it's fluffy and light. Add the brown sugar and beat one minute. Break up the masa and add it a bit at a time with the beater running. When it's incorporated, add the apple butter or sauce. Scraping down the sides of the bowl, add the cherries, pecans and coconut until thoroughly blended. Refrigerate for an hour before assembling for the lightest tamales.


Soak the hojas (dried corn husks) by putting them in a large bowl or sink and covering them with hot water. Let them soak until pliable, about 30 minutes. If the hojas are dirty — they sometimes have lots of corn silk and even dried bugs in them — they will need to be cleaned.

Shake off the water and drain the hojas when you are ready to start assembling tamales. (Hojas dry perfectly and can be stored for future use if you don't use them all.)

Set up a table so that everyone can reach the hojas, masa and filling. Each maker needs his or her own large spoon for spreading masa and a different spoon for the sauce. Put a large casserole on the table for stacking the tamales. Everyone needs a beverage, too.

Begin by holding a corn husk so that it naturally curls upward with the wide side facing you. Spread a generous 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of masa in a 4-inches x 4-inches square on the nearest side of the hoja, right in the center.

Put 2 tablespoons of filling down the middle of the masa. (Both of these measurements are somewhat arbitrary. As you work with the masa, you'll figure it out. The main thing is that the masa should enclose the filling when you fold it up, but you can use more or less masa and more or less filling. It's an imperfect art!)

Fold the right side of the hoja over the filling, covering it with the masa. Fold the left side of the hoja over and tuck it around. You should be holding a long cylinder with masa and filling.

Turn the tamale upright with the masa in the top part, and fold the bottom up. Set the tamale in the casserole so that it can't unfold, or tie it with a strip of corn husk or cotton kitchen thread. (I'm opposed to tying since it adds more time to an already arduous task and doesn't seem to make much difference in the end.)

This is only one method of assembling tamales, but there are several more. For pictures of this technique and alternative folding methods, go to www.fabulousfoods.com/features/tamales/assemble.html.

The objective is to create a waterproof shield for the tamales so that when you steam them, they don't get soggy.

Begin steaming tamales when you have a batch. To get the job done quickly, use two steamers at a time. A pot built as a large steamer works well, but it's easy to improvise with a collapsible basket set in the bottom of a large pot.

Fill the bottom of the pot with as much water as it will contain without touching the bottom of the steamer. Line the bottom and sides of the steamer with hojas. Set the tamales upright very closely together so that they can't fall over. Cover them with more hojas to provide a waterproof ceiling; that way, the water that gathers on the inside of the lid won't drip into the tamales. (Some cooks put a folded kitchen towel on top of their tamales to assure they don't get soggy.) Put the lid on tightly and put the steamer over high heat. When it begins to boil, lower the heat a bit, and keep an eye on it, refilling it with boiling water as needed.

There's nothing more heartbreaking than scorching your tamales, so set a timer, and refill water at least every 30 minutes.

The tamales are finished steaming when the hoja separates cleanly from the masa on a test tamale. It will take 1-1/2 hours at least. Mark the projected finish time on the top of each steamer lid to avoid confusion. Let tamales cool slightly then remove them to a rack and let them finish cooling while you steam more.

When cooled completely, refrigerate or freeze.

To serve the tamales, defrost overnight in the refrigerator, wrap in aluminum foil and heat in a 350-degree oven, or heat single tamales or small batches in a microwave.

Oh! Did I forget to mention that you will feast on the first tamales to come out of the steamer, singing their praises and congratulating yourselves on your dedication to making the finest tamales possible?



On Nov. 10, the Grijalva family, owners of the La Cocina Restaurant in Mesilla Park and Las Cruces Foods Inc., held a tamalada in conjunction with Denise Chavez of the Border Book Festival.

The Grijalva family had been my neighbors when I was growing up in Las Cruces; we hadn't seen each other in more than 40 years, so it was a very exciting occasion for me. Chavez is my old compañera, and anything she's involved in usually is fun and educational.

David Grijalva, son of restaurant founders Mike and Priscilla, gave me a tour of the facilities, introducing me to Johnny Dorado, the master cook who has been with Las Cruces Foods for 30 years and who trained David. During the tamalada, Dorado was hauling the tamales back to the steamer, which was at least the size of a truck bed, with gas flames the size of bananas shooting up the sides. Tamale-making in bulk is impressive!

David explained that when they cook the corn, they combine alkali (also called cal) with hot water. It turns the corn yellow and, in the process, it makes posole. This process, called nixtamalization, was originated by Meso-Americans more than 2,000 years ago. The process makes it easier to grind the corn, increases its protein and vitamin content, and improves its flavor and aroma. Without nixtamalization, the protein in the corn would not be nutritionally available — and populations that survive primarily on a corn diet would suffer from pellagra, a dietary deficiency.

After nixtamalization, the corn traditionally was ground by hand in a metate, but these days the Grijalvas have a machine that grinds the corn between two stones. For tamales, the corn is ground more coarsely, and for tortillas, the corn is ground more finely.

The tamalada was great fun. A grandmother, Socorro Limon, came with her daughter-in-law Sally and granddaughter Aissa. As we chatted, I found out that my grandmother had taught Limon home-economics at Mesilla School.

Limon told the story of her first experience making tamales. As a young bride, she had no one to show her how to make them. She knew that she had to clean the hojas (corn husks), so she scrubbed them white with bleach. She said they were the best tamales she ever made.

A grandfather, Jim McClean from Banderas, Texas, south of San Antonio, brought his teenage grandson, Taylor. A young man in his late 20s whose mom is a friend of Chavez's came because his mother signed him up. He made amazing, huge tamales and sculptures out of the masa.

Chavez gave out door prizes of calendars of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Aztec calendar and we took pictures while the tamales and tamale pies cooked. In the end, we all went home with a dozen each of green chile-chicken, red chile-pork, green chile-cheese and sweet chocolate tamales. More than that, we were all family by the time we left, for we had shared the tamalada, laughed and worked together.