Tamales and refried beans

This past week I spent some time in conversation with an American gentleman who is currently living in Sonora, Mexico. At some point the conversation veered to food. He shared with me some fact sabout tamales that I found very interesting. He said that in Mexico tamales come in many different forms, that what we think of as tamales, i.e. wrapped in corn husks, are indigenes to northern Mexico, that in southern Mexico tamales are often wrapped in banana leaves and may have a smoother “gummy" textured mesa as opposed to the grainy texture mesa most American think of, that tamales from the state of Chiapas frequently include chicken (bone and all) and that there is a large selection of dessert tamales. I found this most interesting. However, I wander from the purpose of this post.

So I shared the story of my first adventure of making frijoles refritos with him. He laughed so hard that he cried. I thought that some of you might enjoy the story too!

In the late 1950’s my North Dakota family hosted an exchange student from Chihuahua, Mexico. One day both my parents were out of town. They left us money for lunch. I inquired of Berta what she would like to eat. She said she was very much missing eating refried beans. I suggested we go to the grocery and purchase the necessary ingredients. Once at there, I promptly escorted her to the canned vegetable isle, standing her in front of what I thought were “beans.” She studied the cans of Blue Lake green beans, yellow pencil wax beans, and Italian Green Beans and finally selected the Blue Lake green beans. (She was from a middle class Mexican family, I don’t think she had ever been inside a kitchen, I was a North Dakota kid who, at that point in my life, had never even heard of pizza, so what did I know about Mexican food?

We went home with our purchase. Berta told me that the beans needed to cook a long time. I heated up two cans of those Blue Lake green beans until all the liquid had evaporated. Berta said that, next, I needed to mash the beans. I hauled out the old potato masher and went to work. Berta said that next, I needed to fry the beans in lard. I turned my mass of green perfection into a cast iron skillet loaded with melted Crisco. When the mashed beans were browned on both sides, I proudly turned them unto our dinner plates. After one bite, Berta said something seemed to be missing. We got some Tabasco sauce from the refrigerator, it didn’t help much but we downed our frijoles refritos, me because I had know idea what I was suppose be cooking, and Berta, basically, for the same reason.

Everytime I recall this misadventure, I am certain that there is a senora somewhere down in Chihuahua that also laughs everytime she recalls the story.

Hot sauce is the fix all of the culinary world! You can put a good hot sauce on tree bark and it would taste good. I have heard of the banana leaf tamale. I wonder how it affects the flavor profile. Sweet or herbaceous?

That's a delightful story. Where I'm from there are tamale stores like bakeries so we didn't bother going thru the tedious process of making tamales. Every family event had a tamale platter and this was a large Latin family. A boy I had dated was a soldier from Indiana joined us once for dinner. He was late and the family had already gone thru their first serving but he was encouraged to sit down with us as an aunt set him up with a plate full of tamales. He sat there looking at the corn rapped tamale with a very strange and odd look on his face. My uncle smiled (who was also a soldier back in the day) and said, "you take the corn husk off before you eat it". He was pretty relieved. We were laughing so hard we almost fell out of our chairs.

So, when I moved here a friend and I decided one day that we could not just talk about good tamales any more we would have to make them. I turned to my trusted cookbook from home and to this day one of my very favorites "Seasoned with Sun". We figured they would freeze well so we quadrupled the recipe. The odd thing about the recipe that I didn't think too much about was the lack of broth and/or water. I think we figured the steam from the pot would provide the moisture necessary to make really good tamales. Turns out we were wrong and produced 48 masa encased rocks. The cookbook edition I had was a rewrite from an older version and and in that suffered a couple of omissions in ingredients.

Once this revelation had been realized I did manage to corner my Dad to give his tamale secrets to me. He had been living in Minnesota for years and had developed a pretty darn good technique. The only thing that you need to know is than it's a huge ordeal and a giant mess that you make in your kitchen. So, to counter this I would have a tamale party right after Thanksgiving. I'd prepare the stuff and my guests would assemble. For this I fed them tortilla soup and sangria and they got to take home a dozen. What was left I froze for Christmas. Very fun times for tamale lovers and a great get together in between the holidays.