Today we had made plans to spend the day with Abuelita Cata and make tamales! I was soooo excited for this because, I haven’t at all satisfied my craving for tamales, and besides that… Abuelita is one of the best cooks around, so it would be my pleasure to learn from her & pick up all that I can from her recipes! So we had a pretty long walk from the mechanic’s in Villa up to the Mercado, to buy something to take to Abue’s house, then to San Francisco to change, then on to Buena Vista.
When we get to her house, she was pretty much ready to go, but of course was concerned about feeding us first. So, to start we had some enchiladas and tostadas for lunch. Simple and DELICIOUS!! The enchiladas weren’t filled with meat or anything just cheese and were sooo good. After lunch, we walked around a bit, and relaxed until Abue said she was ready to start.
Once it was time to get down to business, I was taking notes to add to my recipes. The first biggest difference is her masa is completely unprepared - meaning at first, it doesn’t even look like masa, it’s in “polvo” (powder) still, the freshest form I’ve ever seen. She dries her own home grown corn, then takes the kernals off, cleans it, and takes it to Villa for them to grind it for her. From the freshly ground corn (the same kind she uses to make her masa for tortillas), this is what she starts to make her masa with. I’m used to buying “masa sin preparada” over there in the Mexican grocery stores, we still had to add ingredients to make it our own, but for us, it still starts in masa form. First she starts softening up the manteca, and then little by little she has me adding in the fresh corn flour, then the other special ingredients. Once it’s getting close, I had Josue ask her if she drops a piece into a cup of water, she said no. We asked how does she know when it’s ready. She said she just knows. Well, we figure since she’s been doing it for so long, it makes sense. But for my own curiosity, I had to try it. So Josue got a glass of water and when he brought it over, she said it’s not ready yet. When she said no earlier, I thought she didn’t know what I was talking about, but she did, it’s just not a test she uses. But since she could see I was curious, she humored me, and when it was ready to her, she dropped in a piece & sure enough it floated up to the top! She knows her stuff!
She already had the salsas ready, it looked like we were making both green & red tamales. She also had the pork cooked and ready to go, as well as the hojas cleaned and ready. So now it’s time to put them together. Since we’re in her kitchen , I’m waiting for her to tell me what part she wants me to do. At home I’m used to being one of the masa spreaders, here it’s opposite, she does that part and she wants me to put the fillings and fold them. First we make the green salsa & pork ones. Then she says we’re also going to make “nacatamales”, when I ask her what those are, she says “I’m going to show you.” When we’re done with the green, we start with the red, but these are the ones she’s calling “nacatamales.” Basically, they end up being a little bigger in size, and she said if we had more meat they would’ve been even bigger. She covers practically the whole hoja in masa, and told me to put a lot of red salsa in them, and then spread it all over so that the salsa covers all the masa, then add in a lot of meat. For folding: first you fold the tip up, then fold each side into the middle, then fold them together one last time.
From 3 kilos of masa (en polvo), we made roughly 7 dozen tamales total, about 3 of those being “nacatamales.” I still kept trying to figure out why they are called that, basically the ingredients are the same, it’s just slightly different in how you put them together with a lot more salsa, and then you fold them differently. Abuelita Cata says they’re just called that, because that’s what her mom and grandma called them. She said that one of her grandson’s says they should be called “Catatamales,” because she makes them so good! She starts them to cook and says in about an hour they should be ready.
We cleared the table and washed the dishes while they were cooking, and Abue was preparing a ponche for dinner. Once they were done, we gathered for a nice Christmas Eve dinner with the Abuelitos of fresh tamales y ponche. It was all delicious and warm. Usually I think I prefer tamales de salsa verde, because I just haven’t come across tamales de salsa roja that are as good as my moms. But this time, I liked the “nacatamales” better than the green tamales. They were soo good, and reminded me a lot of mom’s. They were still different, but I loved how spicy they were and how the salsa had cooked into all of the masa. Dinner tonight was perfect! The food was great, ponche so warm & soothing and it was such a special, relaxed day with the grandparents.
After dinner we hung out for a while, before walking back home to Tia Vero’s house. When we got there Tios Georgina y Adolfo and cousins Lety y Flor were also there. They had just finished they’re Christmas Eve dinner and were offering us something to eat. Even after having a nice walk back to San Francisco, we were still full. So we took this chance to go call home. I hadn’t talked to Mom & Dad since we left more than a month ago. And we were so happy to have reached them at home all by themselves. They called us back, and we spent three hours on the phone with them. Time flew, but it was the best Christmas present I could’ve asked for, to hear their voices and catch up. We said our goodbyes, then went back to the other house to see what the family was up to.
It was getting close to midnight, it was going to be time to put the baby Jesus into the nativity scene, but first they sang “El Rorro” to him, then everybody had to kiss the baby Jesus, then they placed him into the nativity. It is tradition here that the baby isn’t put into the scene until midnight going into Christmas, only at this house, there were four babies. We’re still not quite sure why. It was either because all the families that were here each brought their own, or because one of more of them were older, like from Abuela Adela perhaps.
Everybody gave hugs and said Feliz Navidad to each other. It was a nice way to welcome in Christmas.
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