Doug McDonald wrote:
> The Galloping Gourmand wrote:
> > Tamales are classed as "antojitos", which is Spanish for "little whim",
> > or "trifle".
>
> Well, when I was in Guatemala, I was told that at Christmas
> tamales were an essential and important part of the big
> meal, not an appetizer or joke.
Did you ever see that "Married With Children" episode, where the kids
were ecstatic about being served vienna sausages, because it reminded
them of when they were broke and living in their car with their mother?
When you're "running on empty", anything you can get to eat tastes
wonderful.
Family traditions and memories of the times when families were together
are wrapped around food, and sometimes that food was poverty food. If
tamales and frijoles are all a family can afford for Christmas dinner
during hard times, they are going to have tamales every Christmas to
remind them of what kept them together.
As I explained elsewhere, tamales and tacos and burritos are
*antojitos*, and an antojito is a whim, it's a dish that is cheap and
easy to prepare (unless you have delusions of authenticity, and want to
grow and harvest and grind and nixtamalize your own corn).
It takes me an hour to make all the tamales I can stand to eat, once a
year. But, I have a modern kitchen and use commercial masa to make a
huge tamale casserole in the microwave.
I'm not trying to *sell* my tamales on the street corner to make extra
Christmas money,
so a tamale casserole works just fine. Fifteen minutes on high in the
microwave, then let it steam itself for 45 minutes and it's ready to
eat. You can't tell any difference from a corn husk-wrapped individual
tamale.
This site has an extensive listing of all the antojitos imaginable:
http://www.lomexicano.com/mexicanfoodrecipeglossary.htm
The reason that I dwell on the antojito topic, is that this group is
stuck in The Great Taco Swamp. It's mired so deeply down in antojitos,
nobody ever offers any recipes or discussion of anything that isn't an
antojito.
If they talk about a Mexican "restaurant", it's usually a glorified
taco stand.
And, with the large numbers of impoverished immigrants from Mexico and
Central America bringing their own poverty cooking with them, Americans
are tending more and more to believe that Mexico cooking is all about
tacos.
When I was on Cozumel island, our group was looking around for a decent
Mexican resturant that served authentic regional specialties. The other
tourists were thinking that any Mexican restaurant was going to be just
another taco joint, and I was trying to tell them that there was more
to Mexican cooking than just tacos.
So the other tourists asked the pimply-faced young Mexican tour guide
what the heck Mexicans ate. And the guide said, "Oh, we eat a lot of
tacos."
Naturally, he ate a lot of tacos. He was an impoverished Mexican,
struggling to make a living off the generosity of the tourists. He was
all, "Si, si, seņor."
And his hand was always ready for the tip, so he told tourists what
they wanted to hear.
"Oh, si, seņores y seņoras. This way to the tacos, por favor...."
The restaurant we finally settled on did have regional specialties. I
enjoyed my cochinita pibil, while the rest of the tourists chewed on
sad-looking tacos...