The Christmas Tamale Miracle

Many newcomers to this country go through a phase...it must seem like a mental illness to the locals... of Mexican wannabe-ism. Sadly, the template in use for this transformation is almost always assembled from an assortment of Speedy Gonzales cartoons and Carmen Miranda  movies, with an occasional dash of Anita from West Side Story thrown in for good measure. I myself took a while to develop immunity to the disease, and among other symptoms, introduced myself for several months as Elote, which I had seen on a sign and mistakenly thought was the Hispanic version of Elliott. Actually it means corn, and the sign that said Tamales del Elote referred to the ingredients from which the tamales were made, not the cook who made them. I was saved from humiliating myself into the indefinite future by Violet, who grabbed me by the elbow at a cocktail party in those early days and hissed into my  ear "Listen, you silly cow, I don't know who you are, but I know you are not called Elote!"  Standing next to her in her vintage  pallazo pants while she scolded me,  I felt like a tourist in my embroidered blouse, and vowed on the spot to follow her in all things Mexican. That included giving up the lightweight and brightly colored cottons that she said made me look like I was a spinnaker taking a turn around the plaza.

This embracing of made up Mexican culture seldom extends as far as Mexican cooking, perhaps  because doing it well is such a huge pain in the ass. If your idea of Mexican food involves Nachos Supreme or anything with  El  Paso on it, then the way that some of the traditional dishes are actually prepared is an eye opener. I found this out at Christmas.

Tamales are a holiday food here, as specific to Christmas in Mexico as cranberries in New England. Some historians claim that the recipe is thousands of years old, which I believe, as their making certainly predates convenience food. To give you an idea, two critical steps involve charring peppers over an open flame until they blister, and soaking corn in  some weird lime solution until the  the outer shell falls off of kernels that are then ground between stones, for the love of God. Can you fake it? Well, yes, but that's not the Mayan way. I wanted to be a real Mexican.

I was determined to make tamales from scratch last Christmas, a decision that I definitely should have checked out with Violet. Two days ahead of time, I started with the charring and  the soaking and the shopping for the corn husks that tamales are wrapped in before they are steamed. Because the most basic element in a recipe for tamales requires about 100 ingredients, and because most of those had to go through several steps, I found myself exhausted and pissed off before I had even started preparing the meat, a slab of  pork that the guy at the counter had assured me was appropriate for my task. ("You're making tamales? Hey, boys, look  at the gringa, she's going to make tamales!" Although this was said in rapid Spanish made unintelligible by riotous laughter, I was able to understand it.) I don't have a cook's kitchen, and I had to keep washing utensils and using items that weren't meant to be utensils and trying to translate in and out of metric and in and out of Spanish. It was hideous. But I persevered, and when I tasted the tamale sauce I'd made myself from scratch, it seemed worth it.

That didn't solve the problem of waking up Christmas Eve morning with total tamale burn-out, however, or change the fact that the most critical steps of assembling the final dish still remained. When Carmen came over at breakfast time, because I had at least had the good sense to ask her for advice on handling the dried corn husks, she found me slumped on the kitchen stool, despondently surveying the wreckage. I put on a brave face and assured her  I was enjoying myself, no problema, wait until she tasted my Christmas tamales. After she left, I went to accomplish the last of my Christmas errands while the corn husks soaked (these errands included the purchase of a pair of live turkeys as a Christmas present, but I'm certainly not going to go into that here) and when I returned to my home tamale factory, I realized that I was defeated. My Christmas tamale project was a failure, because, after chopping, charring, soaking, dicing, mincing, boiling, shredding, dividing and combining for two full days, I couldn't finish. I could not muster the strength to go into the kitchen with my dumb tamale making book and figure out the last step, which was also the easiest, but I just couldn't face it.

I wanted to cry, I really did. It was Christmas Eve, and  I stood in my kitchen, surrounded by hundreds of dollars worth of tamale fillings and sauces that I was ready to throw out rather than have to look at anymore, when I heard, as if from far away, the whistling theme of  Colonel Bogey's march from "The Bridge on The River Kwai."*

Minutes later, the front gate banged open, and a queue of Mexican women marched in behind my maid's mother, maybe six of them, with a couple of little girls hovering around as well. One of them carried a giant pot, which I recognized because I had one, too. It was a tamale steamer. As I looked more closely, I saw that the women were the local village ladies that I passed in the morning emptying their buckets of water onto the street, or shopping in the corner bodegas and that my maid, Carmen herself, was bringing up the rear. This assortment came into my kitchen, took stock of the mess... and started making tamales. When I asked Carmen what I could do to help,  she turned me by the shoulders and pushed me out of the kitchen, telling me to go watch some television. Which I did, falling limply onto the couch and turning on a Christmas movie. Bruno came home from golf, took one look at the kitchen and went out to buy wine, which he served to the gossiping tamale makers by the tumblerful. After a few rounds of that, another trip to the liquor store, several hours of holiday movies and some Spanglish caroling, the gate closed behind the last of the women, two huge vats of tamales steaming on the stove the only sign that they'd ever been there.

Proving to me once for all that Christmas miracles do happen, and that I am not, and never will be, a Mexican.

*Um, that didn't really happen. I mean the women really did come over, but they didn't  whistle The Theme from the River Kwai.