It Takes a Village

Originally Published on July 5, 2010

Most of the time, reading a cookbook nourishes me, as I taste each ingredient, pinching it between my finger and thumb and mentally inhaling the aroma of sugar and spice. The texture calls to me and I unconsciously lick my lips as I feel it on my tongue, hot and velvety or cold and crispy or light as air. The end of a good recipe leaves me feeling satisfied as I see the creation through to completion and, now sated, move on to consider dessert. Certain recipes call to me and stay in my imagination, as the memory of a lover or of a childhood friend, welcome and dear, but with a sense of longing or nostalgia. When that happens, it is impossible to put the thought of it away in the kitchen junk drawer with the twist ties and kitchen shears and coupons. Sometimes, over the course of a week, I find myself frowning, tension between my brows as I consider how the flavours would combine, often having to swallow deeply as my mouth waters with thoughts of how the acidity of the lime would pucker the back of my tongue until my ears hurt. Or the sweetness makes me run the tip of my tongue over the back of my teeth as I inhale as thought tasting a fine Riesling. When I find myself captivated by a recipe, I have no choice but to make it. If I don’t, the craving will drive me mad. Thus was born my oyster pan roast, as a burning need to taste something I had never tried.

Now, if I lived in the real world, I would simply find a restaurant that served the dish in question and I would order it, mentally deconstructing the ingredients. Perhaps that would allow me to rest without having to recreate it myself. But I live in Cancun and no longer have the luxury of lemons, or garam masala, foie gras or giant leaves of Italian basil, often having to recreate dishes with what’s on hand in the limited resources of our supermarkets. From time to time, the bug bites me and I absolutely must make something that I have tried, like papadzules. Papadzules are the true “bomba Yucateca,” a heavy-duty appetizer of fresh tortillas wrapped around a filling of hard-boiled eggs. The sauces are what raise this dish to mythic proportions. The first, a creamy pale green concoction of “pepita” or pumpkin seeds, the second, “chiltomate,” the essence of tomato, dependent on the freshest tomatoes and the cooks’ skill at seasoning and then frying the sauce. Chiltomate is ubiquitous in Yucatecan cooking and adds texture and depth of flavour to panuchos and salbutes as well as a welcome kick to the banana leaf-wrapped tamales of the region. The third sauce is something that I had only read about in recipe books — hence the obsession. It is an oil squeezed from the pumpkin seeds and drizzles in the bright green stream over the finished papadzules. Because of the difficulty in extracting the oil, a time-consuming process, very few cooks serve all three of the sauces. So, that went on my list of things to cook. A big undertaking and not as impressive as one would think, but still satisfying.

Next, we have the third category of foods that I need to prepare — those that I have tasted and feel that I need to recreate. Tamales appeared at the top of that list. Not the aforementioned Yucatecan variety, available in every loncheria, but the Mexico City corn husk-wrapped beauties, tightly swaddled and masa-filled with green tomatillo sauce and chicken. This is the true tamal. I know this because it is the first kind I ever tried and everyone knows that the first one is always remembered fondly. They did not make these tamales in Cancun.

My life has been greatly enriched by Diana Kennedy’s cookbook on basic Mexican cooking. I have two copies, one in English and one in Spanish given to me by my friend and fellow foodie, Delfina. As I browsed through the book, I spotted a recipe for tamales, a food I had often heard my friends dismiss as too much work to make it worthwhile. The only people who had ever made the always did it as a group event, a giant party with women of all ages taking over the kitchen for a whole day preparing for a fiesta or celebration by spending quality time together gossiping and laughing and making the separate ingredients that formed the whole. Something about the reminiscences of friends and homey scenes from movies made me crave these tamales without cease until I finally decided to try my hand at making them. Perhaps it was the aura of love and family that pushed me over the edge, or maybe it was the tingling of my tongue as I thought of spicy green tomato sauce. Finally, I had a day off and time to try making tamales myself, an undertaking I had been warned about. Hmmm, a challenge. Now they sounded even better.

I headed out in the heat of the morning to Mercado 23, the only market that had not succumbed to the lure of tacky t-shirts and the tourist dollar. It is still a place to find fresh vegetables and meat hanging on hooks. Ten yards form the shop are merchants selling copal incense, candles that ward off the evil eye and twigs, leaves and bark to make tea guaranteed to cure impotence, diabetes, hysteria and insomnia. First stop was Manuel’s fruteria to pick up the most essential piece of the puzzle, the corn husks. These are not readily available in supermarkets, so it was a crap shoot as to whether I’d find them this day. Lo and behold, they had a beautiful firm package of them, more than two dozen pieces tied tightly with a piece of the very same corn husk. A symbol of Mexican ingenuity and self-sufficiency. I was liking this.

As I checked out of the fruteria, corn husks and tomatillos in hand, Manuel called me back. “Señorita, when you buy the lard for the masa, make sure that you buy twice as much as you need. Don’t trust the recipe. And beat it twice as long as the recipe calls for.” Thanking him, I walked jauntily toward the chicken stall to get a fine hen for the filling.

Passing the shops filled with plasticware and crockery, pet food and flowers and heading into the center of the market, I found the fat, yellow chickens aligned on the tile counter of the stall, scaly feet pointing at the passersby. While waiting for the lady who owns the stand to trim the toenails and eviscerate the bird, we chatted about the tamales I would be making. She told me to make sure that after I beat in the lard, I tested for readiness by dropping a small ball of dough into a glass of water. “When the little ball floats, it is ready to use.” Great tip.

Then, off to buy the lard. The chicken lady has told me where to find the very best. My memory and expectation of lard is a lovely white brick of Crisco-like shortening, but around the corner near the carnitas, I find an older gentleman sitting on an overturned paint bucket, selling beige liquid out of plastic bags. Yum. Lard in Cancun. That changes the recipe right there! After buying two bags of lard (heeding Miguel’s warning), the gentleman asks me if I have ever made corn tamales before. I tell him no, and he almost apologetically mentions to me that I need to soak the corn husks for at least half an hour before drying them and filling them. I would never have known.

It’s now time to make tamales, and I pull out the recipe and start the various pots of liquids steaming and boiling on the stove, chicken in one and tomatillos in another. Of course, the corn husks are now soaking in the sink. My maid, Toni, comes out to see what is happening. Her work is finished for the day but she doesn’t want to be left out and she pitches in, which is a big help considering how much beating we have to do. She also gives me the tip that after folding the masa inside the husks, we should take one of the husks and tear it in strips to use to tie the tamales. Simple, but nonetheless a revelation to me. Following all the recommendations from the marketplace, the cookbook and Toni’s mom (“Don’t be impatient. Let them steam for a couple of hours. Make sure they are cooked.”), we filled a huge steamer to the brim. Of course, this could be the reason that it took so long to steam them.

After a few hours, we have two dozen homemade corn tamales filled with chicken and green sauce. And… they are wonderful! Tamales for the week, tamales for the freezer, and best of all, I never have to make tamales again, because a week later, Tamales El Paesa opened three blocks away.

Besos,

Danielle