\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Please! Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recite any recipes. I beg of you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And with that surprisingly authoritarian tone, I explained that all I had done was compliment the chef over the meal my wife and I had been invited to.<\/p>\n
Any comment about the food during the meal often leads to a detailed recipetation of each step, as if we were taking notes.<\/p>\n
But first, let me explain that a few readers of Work of Art have detected \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and told me about \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the cynical tone to a couple of recent columns. For example, I recently wrote about the mysterious fruitcake that fellow columnist Editha Bartley discussed in her weekly column. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my contention that no one has ever eaten that fruitcake; instead, each recipient of the fruit-nuts-and-whatever concoction thanks the giver, smiles, and immediately repackages it to send to someone else, chain-letter fashion.<\/p>\n
The result is that the same fruitcake has circled the globe many times; it is not due at our house until my retirement or in 2034 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whichever comes first.<\/p>\n
This column, which will be about Thanksgiving and Christmas food, will not be a recipe, at least not in the sense of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stir vigorously for three hours, then fold in ground up walnuts saut\u00c3\u00a9ed in vinegar at 650 degrees.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
No, none of that.<\/p>\n
As a Trujillo holiday tradition, started about 15 years ago, I first tried to make tamales. That process takes all day, involves a plethora of cast-iron skillets and a cast of dozens. It guarantees that every utensil in the house gets used.<\/p>\n
I tried it once with my cousin Betty Ann from Wagon Mound, and I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been rather successful. We made about 12 dozen and divided them. I later invited friends over for tamales and one of the guests said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think the masa (dough) is too thick.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to offend me, so I later made adjustments.<\/p>\n
After all, she had a point: once we steam the tamales, the masa expands and as a result, there was too much dough for the amount of filling. The next couple of years I improved them, adding small amounts of chile to the masa and making the masa super thin and the filling extra moist.<\/p>\n
The complaint of the same guest has been that the filling, the meat or pork or turkey was too dry. I wondered what it would take to come up with the kind of tamales my friend Guillermo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aunt makes. Those tamales take a perfect form and texture by merely being folded into the husk, which requires no fancy ties. For a while, I thought we were recreating a real-life this-porridge-is-too-hot account of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.<\/p>\n
On the subject of ties, my attempts have taught me it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a good idea to use those little twist-ties we get at the market, the ones with a metal wire in the middle. Microwaves don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like tiny wires.<\/p>\n
After all these improvements, we made tamales to die for. If there existed an International Homemade Tamale Cook-off, we would have taken the Whole Enchilada (er) Tamale Award.<\/p>\n
Now if you figure the ingredients, the utilities (gas, heat, water) and the cost of the time, labor and food, it gets expensive. If we were in the business, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to charge about five bucks a tamale just to break even. And to think that I cringed when Guillermo announced recently that his aunt found it necessary to jack up the price of tamales from $12 to $15 a dozen.<\/p>\n
One year nobody came: Diego spent Christmas with his in-laws; Ben was away at college; Adam was living in Seattle. I made a half-steamed attempt at tamales, but they disappointed. The next couple of years I stopped.<\/p>\n
But then, Ben\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wife, Heather, who had scarcely ever eaten Mexican food, urged me: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t made tamales in years!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. And she seemed to have memorized all the occasions that I either slaved over a hot stove or sweated as I made excuses for sitting out that year.<\/p>\n
So I tried again, but this time, at the supermarket there was some masa harina already prepared. It was in a transparent plastic tube, soft and pliable, in the cold food section. I thought this would be an opportunity to save a step.<\/p>\n
But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pause for a while to ask: Have you ever really read the facial expressions of someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to be complimentary about your cooking while trying to keep from gagging? If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had that experience, you can capture the grimaces of those who tried a tamale whose taste and texture resembled Michelin vulcanized tires of years back. The guests described the food as chewy, and one accused me of having bought masa that had been prepared years ago. So I tried it, and the result was awful.<\/p>\n
Things eventually got better:<\/p>\n
One thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned is that chile is pointless if it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have some kick. The biggest cop-out that restaurateurs can give those of us who complain about the mildness of their chile is, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The customers complain if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too hot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The first time I made tamales, they were too mild, and the insides tasted more like pudding than chile. Once, I made a great batch when my Danish family was here and we set up an assembly line: Bonnie prepared the husks; Benjie spread the masa extra thin; Heather, ladled on the pork, beef, turkey and combination-of-all-three; Connie wrapped the tamales; Lisbeth placed the tamales into the giant tamalero; I steamed them; Diego removed them and let them cool; and Adam bagged them. It worked well.<\/p>\n
Of course, that was a few years ago. This year will be better. I expect whatever guests we have will thank us Trujillos for the wonderful tamales, giving us a huge good-bye hug while at the same time surreptitiously shoving a take-home tamale into their purse or pocket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Please! Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recite any recipes. I beg of you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And with that surprisingly authoritarian tone, I explained that all I had done was compliment the chef over the meal my wife and I had been invited to. Any comment about the food during the meal often leads to a detailed recipetation of each step, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1295,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}