30 before 30: Tamalada Time!

#6) Hot Tamales

So optimistic at the beginning....

I've always heard that it's quite the ordeal to make tamales. It's a social affair where families gather together and spend an entire day catching up with one another while prepping ingredients, making the masa (Spanish for "dough"), stuffing and rolling the tamales, then steaming them. My friend, Nestor Martinez, hosted a tamale making party. His sweet mother agreed to come over and teach all of us the entire process.

Supervisor/Teacher and Nestor

We started at 8am on a Saturday (which for someone who works nights and/or went out with Messy Nessie the night before can prove to be quite unproductive). When I showed up, everyone had an assigned job -- chopping cilantro, deseeding peppers, deboning chicken, etc. I thought I would be able to get away with loitering and chatting for a bit -- but Nestor's mom was not having it. She said, "You need to be working! Someone give her a job!" Tamale making = hard core.

(as you can see above, literally everyone was doing something and I was clearly just going around taking pictures and getting in the way...) I was assigned me the job of mimosa maker, the most critical position -- you may be thinking it has absolutely nothing to do with making tamales and you're right. But at 8am with this group -- it is vital to the process. I've learned though that "too much orange" means make me a new one with more champagne.

Even though I'd made everyone drinks, I made myself appear to be busy so I didn't get yelled at again. Taking mercy on me as she saw me running out of things to "do" -- my roommate let me help her peel garlic. We thought our hands would never shake the smell, but discovered if you rub this pampered chef metallic circle the odor of garlic goes away. Weird, but true story. Once all the ingredients were prepped and good to go, we made the masa. We got a massive bowl with masa, baking powder, water....and to my horror, a large amount of melted lard.

It had the texture of really thick playdough and we used our hands to mash it all together. By the time it was all said and done our forearms and hands were cramping up. Each time we thought we had it perfect, Nestor's mom would walk by and say "No, not good enough." It really felt like we were working in a factory and she was our supervisor. Over lunch we even discussed the possibility of forming a union. Once the masa met Mama Nestor's high quality standards, we started the process of smearing the masa onto the corn husks which had been soaking in water overnight.....nightmare of a job.

Getting dirty!

Getting that masa onto the husk and off your spoon/fingers was an act of God. For the life of me I couldn't get it to look right so I got fired from that shop and promoted/demoted to rolling the tamales. We finally made a run to Fiesta for these presses that made our lives SO MUCH EASIER! Put the husk and a ball of masa on there with a plastic bag to prevent sticking, smash, voila! God send. Apparently there is only one side of the husk you should use so the tamale doesn't stick to it when you unwrap them -- we didn't discover this small tidbit of info until halfway through the process so it was too late to turn back.

Stones weigh down the husks so they can soak overnight

Later, Nestor went and got a WHOLE new chicken to be deboned because he didn't think we had enough chicken tamales....which meant we had to make MORE masa, just when we were finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. He did not win friend points with this move. Although when we are finally over our tamale coma and decide to start eating them again -- I'm sure we'll all be glad we have more chicken ones. We spent an entire day stuffing, rolling, eating, complaining, etc. On one of our supervised timed breaks, we were exhausted and trying to find ways to delay going back to "work". I even fell asleep at the lunch table.

Hard day in the factory

By the time it was all said and done, we made about 50 dozen tamales!!!! It was messy, tedious, frustrating, difficult, and tiresome -- and SO MUCH FUN! Of course everything is fun when you're stuck in the trenches with good company. Thanks Nestor and Michael for hosting, and thanks Andrea (Nestor's mom) for your patience/whip cracking! My family doesn't know it yet -- but we are having tamales for Thanksgiving this year (and the next 3 years to follow)!