Tamale

• 1. Introduction

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  A red light burning outside a home in Guatemala at night signals that tamales are for sale inside. The tamale itself is a parcel of corn dough and filling with roots thousands of years deep. Today it appears in Andean valleys, Caribbean street stalls and Pacific islands, under many different names. This documentary follows the dish through three questions. How old is it, and who first made it? What did it mean to the peoples who built their identity around corn? And how did one Mesoamerican idea become nacatamales, hallacas, pastelles and humitas?

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• 2. Masa and Wrapper

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  Masa is the foundation of the tamale. It is a dough ground from nixtamalized corn, and it is steamed inside a corn husk or banana leaves. Diners may throw the wrapping away or unfold it and use it as a plate. Fillings can be meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, herbs or chilies, and both the filling and the cooking liquid may carry seasoning.

  The word tamale reached English by way of the Spanish tamal, which descends from the Nahuatl tamalli. English speakers heard the Spanish plural tamales and read the -e- as part of the word's stem. They then applied their own plural rule, and tamale became the singular.

  A modern Mexican cook begins with freshly ground nixtamalized corn, or with a rehydrated masa powder such as Maseca. Lard or vegetable shortening is whisked in, followed by broth or water, until the dough looks like a very thick batter. Tradition calls for whisking both the lard and the finished batter, because the goal is a soft, fluffy texture. Some recipes today use baking powder to get the same lightness. Chili purees or dried chili powder sometimes go into the batter, adding heat and turning certain tamales red.

  How far back this method reaches is a question for archaeologists, and the dates they offer are startling.

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• 3. Ancient Origins

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  Estimates place the first Mesoamerican tamales between 8000 and 5000 BC. Archaeologists Karl Taube, William Saturno and David Stuart argue for a later date of around 100 AD. Their evidence is pictorial references in the Mural of San Bartolo, in Petén, Guatemala. The exact origin has never been settled. The oldest eaters confirmed so far were the Toltecs, in a period given as roughly 250 BCE to 750 CE. Archaeologists found fossilized corn husks around the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan.

  The Olmec and Toltec, and later the Aztec and Maya, all relied on tamales as portable food. Hunters carried them, travelers took them over long distances, and armies were nourished with them. People also considered tamales sacred, the food of the gods. Corn stood at the center of each culture's identity, so tamales had a large part in rituals and festivals.

  The Classic Era of the Maya, 200-1000 CE, left the hieroglyph for tamales on pots and other objects. Tamales appear often in the ceramic ware of those centuries. The Fenton vase shows a plate of unwrapped tamales offered as a penance to a powerful Mayan nobleman.

  A puzzle hides in the Maya record. Tortillas are the basis of the contemporary Maya diet, yet little evidence shows tortilla production in the Classic period. Griddles are missing from the archaeological record. That absence suggests the daily staple may have been the tamal, a cooked mass of maize dough in a plant wrapper. Tamales need no ceramic technology, so their form is thought to predate the tortilla. Language points the same way. The pan-Mayan term wa names a basic daily maize food and can mean either a tortilla or a tamale.

  For the Aztec, the evidence is not a vase or a mural but a written catalog.

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• 4. Aztec Markets and Feasts

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  The Florentine Codex, written by Reverend Bernardino de Sahagún, documents the many tamales sold in Aztec markets. Book X describes flour made from a variety of corn. The tamales were cooked in earth ovens, heated by the steam of dried cane that was grown and harvested only for this purpose.

  The fillings in Sahagún's account range widely. Savory tamales held turkey, fish, frog, axolotl or gopher, as well as bean, squash seed, turkey egg or fruit. Some had no filling at all. Savory tamales took chilis or seeds for seasoning, and sweet ones took honey.

  Book IX of the Codex records a wedding custom. Aztec women stayed up for two to three days cooking tamales before a marriage.

  The festival Uauhquiltamalcualiztli fell in the 18th month of the calendar round. Its name translates as The Eating of Tamales Stuffed with Amaranth Greens, and it honored the fire deity Ixcozauhqui.

  The feast of Atamalcualiztli, meaning the eating of water tamales, came only once every eight years and lasted a whole week. Worshippers ate tamales with no seasoning, spices or filling. The plainness was meant to free the maize from the overwork of the usual cooking methods.

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• 5. Maya Kitchens

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  In certain Maya areas today, cooks steam tamales in a spherical vessel called a tamalero rather than boiling them. The practice has been traced to the Classic Maya period by boiler scale found in pottery from that time. The other common method used a comal, a large flat stone that also cooked tortillas.

  Plantain and banana leaves are the usual wrappers now. Classic-era Maya cooks also used avocado or piper leaves, which men gathered during the rainy season. Meat and fish were the customary fillings. Squash seeds, squash flowers, and greens such as chaya or chipilin were common too.

  Fray Diego de Landa Calderón wrote of what he called special breads, meaning tamales made specifically as offerings. Their fillings included deer heart or quail.

  Hunters and travelers received tamales built for the road. Cooks added extra wood ashes, which formed a hard shell around each tamale as it dried. Protected that way, the tamales could keep for up to 20 days.

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• 6. Central American Tables

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  Panama's tamal de olla, Spanish for tamale of the pot or pan, fills the baking pan it cooks in. It has no banana or plantain leaf wrapping. The recipe combines pork or chicken with cornmeal made from maiz nuevo, plus onion, tomato, bell pepper, olives and raisins. Some cooks add chopped prunes.

  In El Salvador, tamales belong to holidays such as Christmas. Salvadoran tamales have a corn masa base and banana leaf wrapping, with fillings of chicken, vegetables or beans. Tamales de elote are made from fresh corn. Bean tamales, called tamales pisques, are typically eaten during Holy Week.

  In Guatemala, the great Mayan lords of the classical period enjoyed a baked dough bun at the winter solstice. It was made of maize with turkey, tepezcuintle (the lowland paca) or venison, plus spices and chili pepper. Modern Guatemalan tradition absorbed that meal. On Christmas Eve, families prepare black, red or sweet tamales for friends and relatives as a gesture of gratitude. Chocolate, yolk bread and punch accompany them, along with the Mass of Gallo at midnight. Eating tamales at midnight on the 24th and the 31st of December is customary. They also appear at birthdays and baptisms, and stores and private homes sell them, especially on Saturdays.

  Guatemalan varieties are many. Red tamales get their color from achiote and tomato, and black tamales take theirs from chocolate. The chuchito, an emblematic Guatemalan dish, has a firmer dough and a wrapping of dried cob leaves called tusa. Highland cooks make rice tamales from a thick dough of rice, water and salt. Paches, also from the highlands, use potato in place of maize. A plain tamalito has no filling at all and serves to scoop food from the plate.

  Nicaragua's best-known tamal is the nacatamal, which can be an entire meal. Its name comes from the Nawat language of the Nicarao, who lived on the southern Pacific coast, and it means meat tamale. Nicaraguans often make it for Sunday mid-morning and eat it with fresh bread and coffee. A nacatamal is much larger than its cousins. Its masa of nixtamalized corn and lard is cooked with a liquid blend of onion, garlic, tomato, salt, achiote, naranja agria and bell pepper. Ladled onto plantain leaves, the masa receives seasoned pork, rice, sliced potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, olives, spearmint and a small egg-shaped Nicaraguan chile. Cooks tie each pillow-shaped bundle with string and steam or pressure-cook it for several hours. The work often takes two days and sometimes the whole family.

  Nicaragua also has gentler cousins. Pizque is a simple banana-leaf tamal eaten with cheese and cooked red beans, while pizque relleno is a dessert filled with sweetened ground beans. Yoltamal is made from tender corn and wrapped in corn husks. In León, the paco blends masa with mashed green plantain and is wrapped in tempisque or fig leaf.

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• 7. Mexico and the United States

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  Tamale-making in Mexico is a ritual dating to pre-Hispanic times, when each festival or life event had its own special fillings and forms. Preparation is complex and time-consuming. It is a prime example of Mexican communal cooking, and the work usually falls to women.

  Tamales are a favorite comfort food in Mexico, served at both breakfast and dinner. Hot atole or champurrado, arroz con leche, or other maize drinks of indigenous origin often come alongside. Street vendors dish them out of huge, steaming, covered pots called tamaleras or ollas.

  In tropical Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz and the Yucatán Peninsula, banana or plantain leaves replace the corn husk. The tamales there are rather square and often as large as 15 inches (40 cm). On the Yucatán Peninsula the biggest are called pibs. In the Huasteca region, the zacahuil is bigger still, and depending on its size it can feed between 50 and 200 people. Cooks make it for festivals, holidays and quinceañeras, and on Sundays for sale at markets.

  In the United States, Mexican-style tamales fill restaurant menus, but some distinctly indigenous styles also survive. The Choctaw and Chickasaw make banaha, either plain or stuffed. Fried bacon, turkey, venison, nuts, onions, potatoes, squash or sweet potatoes may be mixed into the masa before steaming in a corn husk.

  Cherokee tamales went by the names bean bread and "broadswords". Their masa came from hominy made with corn boiled in water treated with wood ashes rather than lime. Cooks mixed in beans, wrapped the dough in green corn leaves or large tree leaves, and boiled it. Meatless bean and masa tamales of the same kind are still prepared in Chiapas, central Mexico and Guatemala.

  Northern Louisiana has made tamales for several centuries. Spain founded the presidio Los Adaes in 1721, in what is now Robeline. Settlers from central Mexico and their descendants were the first tamale makers to reach the eastern United States. Zwolle, Louisiana, still holds a Tamale Fiesta every October. In the Mississippi Delta, African Americans developed the spicy hot tamale, made from cornmeal instead of masa and boiled in corn husks.

  Tamales were eaten across the United States by 1893, when they were featured at the World's Columbian Exposition. By 1894 they were the most popular ethnic food in Los Angeles, and XLNT Foods began making them. That company is the oldest continuously operating Mexican food brand in the country and one of the oldest in Southern California. Roving tamale sellers also entered early 20th-century blues music, and Robert Johnson sang about them in the 1937 song "They're Red Hot".

  Around 1900, the name tamale pie went to meat pies and casseroles with a cornmeal crust and layered tamale fillings. People call them Mexican food, but Mexican American cooks prefer the individually wrapped style.

  Every December, Indio, California, hosts the Indio International Tamale Festival, which holds two Guinness World Records. One is for the largest tamale festival, with 154,000 visitors in December 2002. The other was for the largest tamale, created by Chef John Sedlar. It measured over one foot (0.3 m) across and 40 feet (12.2 m) long. H. Ayuntamiento de Centro Villahermosa later beat it in Villahermosa, Tabasco, on the 25th of November 2018. The record now stands at 50.05 m.

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• 8. Caribbean to the Pacific

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  Before the 1959 Revolution, Cuban street vendors sold Mexican-style tamales in corn husks, usually without spicy seasoning. Their identical form to Mexico City tamales suggests they arrived after the 1920s, a period of intense musical and cultural exchange between the two countries. In the 1950s, Orquesta Aragón recorded a cha-cha-cha, "Los Tamalitos de Olga", praising a vendor's tamales in Cienfuegos. Cubans also invented the tamal en cazuela, where the meat is stirred into the masa and the whole mixture cooks in a pot into a hearty cornmeal porridge.

  The Dominican Republic has guanimo, tamales stuffed with picadillo, and the name comes from the Taínos. Puerto Rico's guanime goes back to pre-Columbian times. Since Europeans arrived, guanimes have lost their stuffing and are often served plain with stewed salted cod. Modern ones use corn masa seasoned with coconut milk, lard, broth and annatto. Some are made from green plantains, cassava, or sweet plantains with cornmeal.

  In Trinidad and Tobago, the pastelle is a household favorite through the Christmas and New Year season. Cornmeal wraps a filling of seasoned chicken or beef with raisins, olives and capers. Cooks bind the banana leaf with twine, steam it, and unwrap a brightly yellow dish. The sweet version is called paymee.

  Jamaica's duckunoo, also called tie-a-leaf or blue drawers, is a dessert version of tamal dulce. It combines sweet potato, coconut or cornmeal with cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, brown sugar, coconut milk and vanilla. Belize, Haiti, French Guiana and other islands have similar dishes. In Belize the dukunu takes its name from the Garifuna people and is built on roasted corn kernels blended with coconut milk.

  In the Andes, the humita takes its name from the Quechua humint'a and dates to pre-Hispanic times. Fresh choclo is pounded to a paste, wrapped in a fresh corn husk, and slowly steamed or boiled. The Brazilian pamonha uses fresh, not nixtamalized, corn paste. Venezuela's hallaca is folded in plantain leaves with a stew of beef, pork or chicken, raisins, capers and olives. Cooks tie it with string and boil it for Christmas. In Lima, the chef Juan José Cabezudo became famous for tamales served from his food stand near the Plaza Mayor.

  Spain governed the Philippines and Guam as a province of Mexico, and tamale-like foods took root in both. In the Philippines, they merged with the leaf-wrapped rice cakes called kakanin. Pampanga knows them as bobotu, and cooks in Batangas wrap them in banana leaves. Sweet corn versions from the Visayas use corn husks. Tamalis are made from small fish fry steamed in banana leaves, a cousin of Mexico's tamales de charal. Many varieties have faded under the pressure of modern life and fast food. On Guam, the tamales guiso, wrapped in corn husks, remain evidence of the galleon trade between the ports of Manila and Acapulco.

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