December 26, 2006

mmm-yoso is not on vacation. Cathy is blogging while Kirk isn’t. Thanks for stopping by.

Hi again. This post isn’t particularly late. I had a busy Christmas Eve Day and photographed it so I could blog it. It isn’t like many of you were sitting around the house waiting to see what was going on here. Its also way past Christmas Eve and I would assume you have done whatever tradition your family does anyhow.

There are many food traditions upheld at this time of year. During Hanukkah, fried and dairy foods are traditionally eaten. Most Italians have seven courses of fish, the Polish eat a meatless meal on Christmas Eve and the Germans usually have goose. Most Scandinavians have pork as the centerpiece of their meal (Santa starts his journey from the North pole, very close to Finland, you know, and that Man does not look like he’s a fish eater).

Its traditional in Mexican households to have tamales for Christmas Eve dinner. The making of tamales at home is another tradition. My dear neighbor who had us over for Thanksgiving dinner this year (since I was basically helpless in a to-the-shoulder cast helping me to keep my broken, displaced wrist immobile) invited me over to help make tamales…and, of course, I documented it. Afterward, we went to a friend’s home in Lakeside for some more socializing before we headed home to wait for Santa.

So, tamales. Basically, stewed meat surrounded by masa (prepared corn meal) that is wrapped in corn husks and steamed until the corn meal is cooked. You could Google it, but I’ll just show you.

Ah, but the stewed meat. My neighbor cooked and skinned, shredded and boned chicken and a beef roast the night before. Then, in a blender, you put two types of dried chili’s

with chicken broth, some cooked tomatillos and mix the chili sauce with the shredded meats (we mixed both together) with spices-

salt, pepper, cumin, garlic and heated it all in large pots on the stove for about an hour, to get the flavor into the meat.

The lady who was teaching us had prepared the masa (all ten pounds of it) before coming over. So the assembly line started… Take the masa-

and spread thinly onto about 2/3 of a corn husk.

Put some of the meat/chili filling

onto the corn husk/masa, fold, stack

and then stack into

a tamale pot which has a tray on the bottom, allowing for the steam to rise . For about 2 hours, with extra corn husks on top of the tamales and the lid on the steamer..

Yes, we made over 8(eight) dozen of those lovely morsels. Viola! the finished product…so fresh tasting and with just the right amount of heat from the chili sauce, all you need on the side is some sour cream.

While the tamales were cooking, The Mister and I went to the home of the parents of some friends, and we had a nice feast.. salad, olives, sides and of course-