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The Galloping Gourmand wrote:
> Actually, the moisture inside the corn husk wrapped tamale probably
> escapes through the permeable leaf.
>

I agree that the steam escapes... however, it definitely holds it
better than corn husks. I have eaten them both ways and I have now
made them both ways. When you take the banana leaf off of a tamale,
the leaf is dripping on the inside surface and the tamale is moist.
There is no doubt that it holds moisture better than a corn husk. I
realize that it isn't water-tight... but, better.

Jack

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Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:
Are you
> perhaps elucidating the dining habits of well off Mexicans?
>
> Orlando


Orlando,

As most of my time is spent in Mexico and I eat dishes that are enjoyed
across the economic board when there, I am somewhat surprised at your
question. It sounds a little like the attitude that I see among
gringos who feel that if it isn't what the po folk eat, it isn't
authentic, or un plato tipico de Mexico. You may not be saying that,
but it sounds a little like it.

Middle and upper class Mexicans are still Mexicans and the foods they
eat can still be of interest. Due to my business, I tend to meet and
dine with a lot of better-heeled Mexicans and I'm sure that when we eat
together, we do it differently than those in a Mayan village in the
jungle (as I have done that, too).... as a travel writer/publisher, I
see both sides of the fence. Maybe what you are saying is merely that
the poster should indicate what economic level family might eat in that
manner. If so, that's probably true and we would learn more from the
posts.

Regards,

Jack

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Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:
> wrote:
> >Yes, and an informal party where nothing but tamales and tacos and
> >other antojitos are served would be called a "taquiza".
> >But it's still not a multicourse formal *comida*, which would have a
> >salad, wet soup, dry soup or pasta, one large main dish (or two smaller
> >ones), pastry and coffee, followed by brandy and cigars and talk of
> >revolution.

>
> I'm Hispanic, though not Mexican, but I can't imagine that poor
> Mexicans, whether urban or peasant, enjoy such lavish meals. Are you
> perhaps elucidating the dining habits of well off Mexicans?


Of course well-off Mexicans are going to eat better than the
impoverished peons of northern Mexico who often have little to eat but
tortillas and beans. Well-off Mexicans might have seafood, meat and
fowl on the same menu for their Christmas comida.

Peasants are lucky to get lard and beans as a protein substitute.
Sometimes they don't even have the beans, they buy a quarter kilo of
tortillas and eat them with chiles
and a little salt.

Some of my relatives and ancestors came from Spain, fleeing the Spanish
Inquisition, but they merged with other cultures in the American
melting pot. I don't know if my grandmother spoke a single word of
Spanish, but nobody seems to know how pronounce her rare surname
correctly, so it's probable that she didn't.

She was born in South Dakota, the year it became a state, and she
probably never ate a tamale until she got to California forty years
later. She died the year I was born, so I didn't ask.

Of course there is a world of Mexican cuisine beyond tamales and tacos
and burritos, but how did Americans get stuck in the misconception
about what is a regional specialty and what is just a snack?

Most of the food items that Americans are familiar with (and identify
as typically "Mexican") are botanas and antojitos which were often
served to Mexican laborers in San Antonio a century ago.

The first immigrants from any country are men, who leave their families
behind and work to save up enough money to bring them over the border.

Then the next group will start the ethnic trades of various sorts,
especially ethnic cooking. There would be tiny restaurants and tamale
stands and pushcart vendors who would sell tacos and tamales and any
other items that were easily prepared.

Each tamale cart vendor would have his own song that he sang as he
pushed his cart through the neighborhood. Lovely senoritas would set up
tables in the town squares of Texas cities and sell their exotic
tamales to people walking by.

But there was a crackdown on sanitation during the 1930's, and the
tamale and taco stands were shut down by American health departments.

By this time, Americans were hooked on the addictive taste of toasted
corn and pork lard with chile sauce.

And, Texas cowboys were often partly paid with beef instead of money
during the Great Depression, so the quickly-prepared fajita, fried with
peppers and onions, was invented.

An entire border cuisine emerged. It was called Tex-Mex and people from
the northwestern parts of Mexico and Texas were eating it.

There was no such thing as a mole that took days or weeks to prepare.
Chile powder was added to brown gravy and poured over tamales.

Then, in the late 1940's, two Texans in southern California (One was
named Bell) decided to recapture the taste of Tex-Mex and commercialize
it. And that's how Del Taco and Taco Bell were born.

My mother, who was half German and half Danish, loved the taste of
toasted corn meal and pork lard. She would take the family to an old
adobe house which had been converted into a restaurant by a Mexican
immigrant. Diners were served tamales and beans and Mexican rice in the
living room and the bedrooms in 1950.

And that was as good as it got. Mexican restaurants were all serving
the same "combination plates" of what were essentially Mexican snacks.
And the Mexican theme restaurant industry was taking off in the
southwest.

The theme restaurant chains were serving the the same basic combination
plates, which were effectively samplers of various snacks, and they
were charging $15 or $20 per diner to eat what border peasants could
eat for fifty cents.

Of course, nowadays the Mexican theme restaurants have picked up on the
fattening aspects of pork lard, and we have a trend towards low fat
Cal-Mex offerings, which is still nothing more than salads and snacks.

That's when I started looking at Mexican cookbooks to learn how to make
my own tamales and enchiladas, etc. It was getting too damned expensive
to eat peasant food
while sitting in a faux-Mexican fiesta scene. It was the taste I was
after, not the ambiance.

And I picked up a cookbook that explained the business about how
antojitos like tacos and tamales and enchiladas were nothing but
snacks, and how ignorant Americans were being fooled into thinking that
such snacks were regional "specialties".

Now the antojito is so entrenched in the fast food culture that
ignorant Americans think
that tamales and tacos and enchiladas typify ALL Mexican food, and this
NG is filled with tiresome debates about the origin of the burrito and
whether chili should have beans in it, instead of exploring the
less-commercialized regional specialties of central and southern Mexico.

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Wayne Lundberg wrote:
> Maybe the cigars and brandy would be more likely in an upper class home.
> Beer and flavored waters for the less wealthy. But the meals are pretty much
> what's described, universally.


They would drink Courvoisier and smoke Cubans in an upper class home...
but cigars and Presidente brandy are still available to the po folk.

Jack

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wrote:
>It sounds a little like the attitude that I see among
>gringos who feel that if it isn't what the po folk eat, it isn't
>authentic, or un plato tipico de Mexico. You may not be saying that,
>but it sounds a little like it.


I certainly don't think poor people are the authentic cultural
representers. However, there has been quite a bit of disparaging
commentary regarding the kinds of foods poor Mexicans eat, the very same
antojitos and taco type foods that have accompanied poor Mexicans to the
U.S. as they've come to labor, and the very same foods Americans know so
well as being Mexican. It's the disparaging tone that bothers me, as
though any Mexican meal without a dry and wet soup, main dish, dessert
and bottle of brandy afterwards is pig's slop.

>Middle and upper class Mexicans are still Mexicans and the foods they
>eat can still be of interest.


NO doubt.

>Due to my business, I tend to meet and
>dine with a lot of better-heeled Mexicans and I'm sure that when we eat
>together, we do it differently than those in a Mayan village in the
>jungle (as I have done that, too).... as a travel writer/publisher, I
>see both sides of the fence. Maybe what you are saying is merely that
>the poster should indicate what economic level family might eat in that
>manner. If so, that's probably true and we would learn more from the
>posts.


Precisely.

Orlando
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wrote:
>Of course well-off Mexicans are going to eat better than the
>impoverished peons of northern Mexico who often have little to eat but
>tortillas and beans. Well-off Mexicans might have seafood, meat and
>fowl on the same menu for their Christmas comida.


Poorer Mexicans might splurge on holiday meals or birthdays, but eat
tortillas and beans most of the rest of the year.

>Peasants are lucky to get lard and beans as a protein substitute.
>Sometimes they don't even have the beans, they buy a quarter kilo of
>tortillas and eat them with chiles
>and a little salt.


As evidenced in Oscar Lewis' _The Children Of Sanchez_

>She was born in South Dakota, the year it became a state, and she
>probably never ate a tamale until she got to California forty years
>later. She died the year I was born, so I didn't ask.


I'm sorry, but for someone who claims to know so much about Mexican
regional specialties, it might be helpful for you to learn that the
singular of tamales is tamal, not tamale. There is no such word as
tamale.

>Of course there is a world of Mexican cuisine beyond tamales and tacos
>and burritos, but how did Americans get stuck in the misconception
>about what is a regional specialty and what is just a snack?


Snacks can be regional specialties too.

>Most of the food items that Americans are familiar with (and identify
>as typically "Mexican") are botanas and antojitos which were often
>served to Mexican laborers in San Antonio a century ago.


I think the same Americans who consider such foods typically Mexican are
also traditional fast food eaters. They are the same types who consider
pizza and calzones typical Italian.

>Mexican restaurants were all serving
>the same "combination plates" of what were essentially Mexican snacks.
>And the Mexican theme restaurant industry was taking off in the
>southwest.
>The theme restaurant chains were serving the the same basic combination
>plates, which were effectively samplers of various snacks, and they
>were charging $15 or $20 per diner to eat what border peasants could
>eat for fifty cents.


I entirely hear you. But, bear in mind that many Chicanos now associate
these very same snack foods with their heritage, just as Italian-
Americans do with pizzas and calzoni.

>That's when I started looking at Mexican cookbooks to learn how to make
>my own tamales and enchiladas, etc. It was getting too damned expensive
>to eat peasant food
>while sitting in a faux-Mexican fiesta scene. It was the taste I was
>after, not the ambiance.


Here in Philadelphia, we have many joints catering primarily to
Mexicans, and they serve a mixture of snack foods and more complex
dishes. But, I do not find mancha manteles or pollo en pibil at such
restaurants. The most complex dish I tend to find is mole, usually
added to stewed chicken.

>Now the antojito is so entrenched in the fast food culture that
>ignorant Americans think
>that tamales and tacos and enchiladas typify ALL Mexican food, and this
>NG is filled with tiresome debates about the origin of the burrito and
>whether chili should have beans in it, instead of exploring the
>less-commercialized regional specialties of central and southern Mexico.


I haven't read any posts alleging that antojitos are all there is to
Mexican food. but, if people want to explore that subset of Mexican and
Chicano food, why maintain this crusade against them?

Orlando
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Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:
> wrote:


> >She was born in South Dakota, the year it became a state, and she
> >probably never ate a tamale until she got to California forty years
> >later. She died the year I was born, so I didn't ask.

>
> I'm sorry, but for someone who claims to know so much about Mexican
> regional specialties, it might be helpful for you to learn that the
> singular of tamales is tamal, not tamale.


That's true, if the discussion is taking place in Spanish, but it
isn't, this is an English language newsgroup.

> There is no such word as tamale.


Look in any English dictionary. The entry is "tamale", NOT "tamal".

And, since the Spanish word "tamal" comes from the Nahuatl word
"tamalli", the English "tamale" is closer to what the humble steamed
corn roll was originally called.

> I haven't read any posts alleging that antojitos are all there is to
> Mexican food. but, if people want to explore that subset of Mexican and
> Chicano food, why maintain this crusade against them?


Fine, let them "explore" antonjitos until they belch and fart and
experience great intestinal
distress. But some of these tacoheads are putting on airs as if
stuffing tacos with brains and heart and liver and other offal makes
them some kind of "expert" on "authenticity".

The tacoheads are beyond the point of mystifying the antojito as the
soul of all Mexican cooking, and we just can't seem to pull out of this
Great Taco Swamp to talk about things like the wonderful seafood of the
gulf coasts, and can't get any interest at all going in chilango food.

Chances are, border food may overwhelm and replace authentic Mexican
cooking even in the heart of Mexico. Educated tourists already have to
search for something beyond antojitos when they visit tourist
destinations.

And, the original poster started off this thread with the innocent
question, "What do you serve with your Christmas tamales," as if
tamales were the centerpiece of a Christmas dinner, instead of a
pre-dinner snack to fend off the munchies while the real main dish is
being prepared.

Finally, as an American, I celebrate abundance at Christmastime, I
don't celebrate poverty. I have no memories of growing up in a village
in the Sierra Madre where tamles were a great treat, I have memories of
eating roast beef and turkey and chicken at Christmas, and, if I'm
going to have a formal meal with a Mexican flair, it will have similar
entrees, better quality meat and fowl, cooked with Mexican moles, etc.

But, for those who really want to experience a Mexican Christmas in all
its poverty, I suggest they join the peace Corps and go live in a
remote village.

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"Jack Tyler" > wrote in message
ps.com...
>
> Wayne Lundberg wrote:
> > Maybe the cigars and brandy would be more likely in an upper class home.
> > Beer and flavored waters for the less wealthy. But the meals are pretty

much
> > what's described, universally.

>
> They would drink Courvoisier and smoke Cubans in an upper class home...
> but cigars and Presidente brandy are still available to the po folk.
>
> Jack


True... besides, Presidente is not that bad. Darned good value for the
money.

>





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Wayne Lundberg wrote:
> True... besides, Presidente is not that bad. Darned good value for the
> money.
>
> >


I bring a bottle back from every trip.

Jack

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