On Friday night, Casa Puente had a despedida for our landlord, West, because he began a new adventure today in Ambos Nogales with the Kino Border Initiative (check them out!).
In addition to always having great company, the next best thing about the parties we have is the amount of awesome food that people bring: homemade mango pico de gallo, homemade coconut mochi...the assortment is almost unreal. My next door neighbors brought over two big plates of steaming hot tamales, and as I was sitting with the mother, Maria, I finally asked her if she would teach me how to make them. I tried to learn how to make Central American tamales (the ones wrapped in banana leaves) when I was in Costa Rica, but they are super labor intensive so I gave up and resigned myself to just eat them instead. But I figured I would aprovechar the knowledge of my wonderful neighbors here and give Mexican tamales a shot.
So on Saturday morning, Maria's son, Junior, came over to tell me it was "tamale time." When I got there, Maria handed me a tamal to eat that she had just heated up. Normally at parties I eat around the meat inside and discreetly throw the meat away inside the corn husk because I don't like to draw attention to the fact that I'm a vegetarian. However, Maria was basically watching me eat, so I politely ate every last bit, including the beef. (This scenario was repeated two more times throughout the day because Maria wanted to make sure I had my tamal-making strength...my stomach was not very happy with me.)
I spent the next four hours cutting up several pounds of beef into bite-sized pieces and trying to memorize the recipe for tamales. We used more pounds of Maseca than I could count, along with water, oil, salt, baking powder and the broth from cooking the beef. We mixed enormous quantities at a time with our hands until the texture and taste was just right. Then came the tedious work of covering each corn husk with a thin layer of the dough. It was way more difficult than I thought to get the dough to spread evenly and smoothly. I felt like I was slowing Maria down more than anything else, but she said that she likes teaching people how to cook and she enjoys the company that comes along with the very minor assistance that people like me offer. Plus, she was super proud of how much I improved throughout the day.
While we were cooking, Maria's three kids showed me a video of the oldest daughter's quinceañera last year and we chatted about all sorts of random stuff. Maria also told me a little about her life; about how she grew up in the state of Durango but moved to Juárez when she was a teenager to work in a maquila, where she ended up meeting her husband. She also shared with me some of the myths related to cooking tamales; for example, although groups of women often make tamales together, only one woman can put them in the pot to be cooked on the stove if they are going to turn out well. Also, to start putting them in the pot, the first four go in a cross and she says a brief prayer.
The experience was really cool, and I was rewarded for my work with a bowl of hot, fresh tamales to bring home:
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