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Our Lady of Guadalupe feast features celebratory tamales, draws families to churches
By Lisa Abraham
Beacon Journal food writer
POSTED: 12:08 p.m. EST, Dec 08, 2009
Each December, when millions of Americans are baking cookies to get ready for Christmas, millions of Mexican-Americans are making tamales to get ready for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
For Mexicans, the three-day celebration is even bigger than Christmas, explained Alma Silva, who immigrated to Akron with her husband and daughter six years ago from Puebla, Mexico.
The Dec. 12 feast marks the days — Dec. 9 to 12, 1531 — when Mexicans believe the Virgin Mary appeared to Aztec Indian Juan Diego, leaving her image on his cloak. The apparition led to the conversion of millions of Aztecs to Roman Catholicism. The cloak, which still bears the image, remains on display in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
While a Guadalupe celebration will have many foods, it will always include tamales, Silva said. She spoke with the help of an interpreter, Ada Gelpi, coordinator for the Hispanic office at St. Bernard's Catholic Church, which ministers to the Hispanic community in Akron.
Silva said tamales are considered holiday or celebration food in Mexico, and can be made with a variety of fillings — shredded chicken, pork or beef, peppers and cheese, or even with raisins and nuts as a sweet filling.
For the feast day, families will gather at their churches and celebrate day and night, singing, dancing, eating, reciting the rosary and giving thanks for what they have, Silva said.
A similar celebration takes place at St. Bernard's on Saturday following the 4:30 p.m. Mass, which will include Hispanic food, music and dancing. Women from the church's Association of Guadalupe will be preparing food for the celebration, including hundreds of tamales, Gelpi said.
Silva, 35, said she learned to make tamales from her mother and will pass on the tradition to her own daughter, Lorena.
Authentic tamales are prepared inside dried corn husks, which can be purchased at specialty stores and also at some major grocery stores in their international foods sections.
Gelpi said in countries where the population is poor, no parts of any food go to waste. While corn husks cannot be eaten, they are saved and dried to be used for making tamales. In Gelpi's home country of Puerto Rico, tamales are made inside banana leaves.
Soaking the dried husks is an important step, because it makes them soft and pliable so they can be filled with tamale ingredients and folded up for cooking. Silva said she could think of no substitution for the corn husks, but noted that they aren't too difficult to find locally. (See store list.)
The foundation for tamales is a dough made from masa de harina — field corn which is dried and then treated with lime. The treated corn is washed and ground into a dough called masa. Because fresh masa doesn't keep, it is dried and powdered, and sold commercially as masa de harina. Look for bags that read ''masa for tamales.''
Silva adds salt, baking powder, melted vegetable shortening, and liquid to the masa de harina, and kneads it back into fresh masa dough.
For making tamales, Silva uses a simple filling of poached chicken and salsa verde — a green salsa made from fresh tomatillos and jalapeno peppers. Her salsa packs a punch, and is made with half a pound of whole, fresh jalapeno peppers — including their seeds and membranes. Silva chuckled that by Mexican standards, the sauce is not considered hot. Inside the finished tamales, it doesn't seem quite as fiery when paired with the mild flavors of the masa and chicken.
She said filling tamales with chopped green pepper, tomatoes and cheese — Mexican queso blanco — is another popular way of preparing them in her hometown. Little cheese is used in authentic Mexican cooking, and never the shredded yellow cheese that is so common in the U.S. on Mexican foods, Silva said.
After the husks are drained, Silva sorts through them, putting aside ones that are too small for filling and picking out any strings or bits of debris. She uses husks that will open up to about five to six inches wide. The smaller ones she saves for lining her pot before steaming the tamales.
One recipe will make more than 30 tamales, but Silva said they can be made smaller to serve as appetizers.
Once the husks are filled with masa, chicken and salsa verde, they are folded over and lined up inside a kettle to be steamed. Water is placed in the bottom of the kettle, topped with the husks that were too small for filling. The finished tamales are cooked standing up on top of the bed of husks.
Some recipes call for using strips of corn husk to tie the tamales together so they resemble a small package, but Silva said that isn't necessary. If the tamales are rolled correctly and folded over, they won't come apart during cooking.
Silva's recipe follows. Other types of meat or sauces could be substituted as fillings, but the procedure for assembling and cooking the tamales remains the same. Silva said tamales should never be prepared with raw meat as the steaming alone is not enough to properly cook meat.
Leftover cooked tamales can be frozen in their husks and later thawed and reheated in a microwave oven.
Admission to the feast day party at St. Bernard's, 44 University Ave., is $5, and food will be sold by the plate for $5. Children age 12 and younger are admitted for free. For more information about the feast day celebration, call St. Bernard's Hispanic Office at 330-253-5364.
TAMALES MEXICANOS
For the meat filling:
1 package chicken breasts or thighs, with bones and skin attached (approximately 3 breasts or 4 thighs)
Salt
Water for poaching
For the salsa verde:
1 lb. tomatillos, husks removed
1/2 lb. jalapeno peppers, stemmed
1/2 medium yellow onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic
Salt to taste
For the tamales
1 package corn husks
1 package (4.4 lbs.) instant corn masa mix for tamales (masa de harina)
1 lb. vegetable shortening, melted
2 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. baking powder
10 to 12 cups reserved liquid from cooking chicken, supplemented with water if necessary
To prepare the salsa verde, place the tomatillos, peppers, onion, garlic and salt in a food processor or blender and pulverize into a sauce, adding a small amount of water if needed to reach a salsa consistency. Set aside.
Place chicken pieces in a 3-quart saucepan, fill with cold water and season with salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through.
Remove chicken from liquid, reserving cooking water. Cool chicken, remove bones and skin and discard them, then shred chicken meat. To the cooking water add enough additional water to make 12 cups of liquid.
While chicken is cooking, open package of corn husks and soak husks in a large bowl of hot water for at least half an hour to soften. When soft, drain and pick through to remove any strings or other debris. Sort through husks and set aside ones that are too small to stuff. Reserve these smaller husks for lining your pan.
Place masa de harina in a large bowl, add salt and baking powder, about half the reserved chicken cooking water and the melted shortening.
Using your hands, mix masa together until it begins to form a dough, adding more liquid as needed. You may not have to use all 12 cups of liquid. Dough is ready when all ingredients are thoroughly combined and dough is soft and will hold together without crumbling.
To assemble the tamales, take a husk and spread it open in the palm of your hand. Spread about half a cup of the tamale dough inside the husk. Top with some shredded chicken, and then with a generous spoonful of salsa.
Fold in sides of husk to cover fillings, then fold pointed end of husk over, leaving the wider end open. Repeat until all dough is used up. If a husk is too small to close completely, take a smaller husk and wrap over it.
Place about an inch of cold water into the bottom of a large stock pot or soup kettle. Take a smaller stainless steel bowl and invert it inside the kettle. A steamer insert in the pot also can be used. Fill the area around the bowl with reserved small corn husks.
Take finished tamales and arrange standing up (open side up) on top of husks inside kettle. Once all tamales are lined up in pot, cover top of tamales loosely with plastic wrap. This will help the tamales to steam better.
Put a lid on the pot, and cook, over medium heat, for 30 to 40 minutes until tamale dough is steamed through. Tamales are done when the dough no longer sticks to the husk and the husk easily peels away from the tamale.
Unwrap tamales from husks before eating. Serve with additional salsa.
Makes 30 to 40 tamales; 50 or more appetizer size.
— Alma Silva, Akron
Lisa A. Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or labraham@thebeaconjournal.com.
Where to find it
Ingredients like masa de harina and dried corn husks needed for authentic Mexican tamales can be found at the following locations:
--San Miguel, 158 E. Tallmadge Ave., Akron, 330-535-4004.
--La Michoacana, 1448 Copley Road, Akron, 330-864-0565.
--La Loma Supermarket, 421 Darrow Road, Akron 330-784-9300 (expected to open within the week).
--Dave's Market, 871 E. Exchange St., Akron 330-253-8957.p>
Each December, when millions of Americans are baking cookies to get ready for Christmas, millions of Mexican-Americans are making tamales to get ready for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
For Mexicans, the three-day celebration is even bigger than Christmas, explained Alma Silva, who immigrated to Akron with her husband and daughter six years ago from Puebla, Mexico.
The Dec. 12 feast marks the days — Dec. 9 to 12, 1531 — when Mexicans believe the Virgin Mary appeared to Aztec Indian Juan Diego, leaving her image on his cloak. The apparition led to the conversion of millions of Aztecs to Roman Catholicism. The cloak, which still bears the image, remains on display in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
While a Guadalupe celebration will have many foods, it will always include tamales, Silva said. She spoke with the help of an interpreter, Ada Gelpi, coordinator for the Hispanic office at St. Bernard's Catholic Church, which ministers to the Hispanic community in Akron.
Silva said tamales are considered holiday or celebration food in Mexico, and can be made with a variety of fillings — shredded chicken, pork or beef, peppers and cheese, or even with raisins and nuts as a sweet filling.
For the feast day, families will gather at their churches and celebrate day and night, singing, dancing, eating, reciting the rosary and giving thanks for what they have, Silva said.
A similar celebration takes place at St. Bernard's on Saturday following the 4:30 p.m. Mass, which will include Hispanic food, music and dancing. Women from the church's Association of Guadalupe will be preparing food for the celebration, including hundreds of tamales, Gelpi said.
Silva, 35, said she learned to make tamales from her mother and will pass on the tradition to her own daughter, Lorena.
Authentic tamales are prepared inside dried corn husks, which can be purchased at specialty stores and also at some major grocery stores in their international foods sections.
Gelpi said in countries where the population is poor, no parts of any food go to waste. While corn husks cannot be eaten, they are saved and dried to be used for making tamales. In Gelpi's home country of Puerto Rico, tamales are made inside banana leaves.
Soaking the dried husks is an important step, because it makes them soft and pliable so they can be filled with tamale ingredients and folded up for cooking. Silva said she could think of no substitution for the corn husks, but noted that they aren't too difficult to find locally. (See store list.)
The foundation for tamales is a dough made from masa de harina — field corn which is dried and then treated with lime. The treated corn is washed and ground into a dough called masa. Because fresh masa doesn't keep, it is dried and powdered, and sold commercially as masa de harina. Look for bags that read ''masa for tamales.''
Silva adds salt, baking powder, melted vegetable shortening, and liquid to the masa de harina, and kneads it back into fresh masa dough.
For making tamales, Silva uses a simple filling of poached chicken and salsa verde — a green salsa made from fresh tomatillos and jalapeno peppers. Her salsa packs a punch, and is made with half a pound of whole, fresh jalapeno peppers — including their seeds and membranes. Silva chuckled that by Mexican standards, the sauce is not considered hot. Inside the finished tamales, it doesn't seem quite as fiery when paired with the mild flavors of the masa and chicken.
She said filling tamales with chopped green pepper, tomatoes and cheese — Mexican queso blanco — is another popular way of preparing them in her hometown. Little cheese is used in authentic Mexican cooking, and never the shredded yellow cheese that is so common in the U.S. on Mexican foods, Silva said.
After the husks are drained, Silva sorts through them, putting aside ones that are too small for filling and picking out any strings or bits of debris. She uses husks that will open up to about five to six inches wide. The smaller ones she saves for lining her pot before steaming the tamales.
One recipe will make more than 30 tamales, but Silva said they can be made smaller to serve as appetizers.
Once the husks are filled with masa, chicken and salsa verde, they are folded over and lined up inside a kettle to be steamed. Water is placed in the bottom of the kettle, topped with the husks that were too small for filling. The finished tamales are cooked standing up on top of the bed of husks.
Some recipes call for using strips of corn husk to tie the tamales together so they resemble a small package, but Silva said that isn't necessary. If the tamales are rolled correctly and folded over, they won't come apart during cooking.
Silva's recipe follows. Other types of meat or sauces could be substituted as fillings, but the procedure for assembling and cooking the tamales remains the same. Silva said tamales should never be prepared with raw meat as the steaming alone is not enough to properly cook meat.
Leftover cooked tamales can be frozen in their husks and later thawed and reheated in a microwave oven.
Admission to the feast day party at St. Bernard's, 44 University Ave., is $5, and food will be sold by the plate for $5. Children age 12 and younger are admitted for free. For more information about the feast day celebration, call St. Bernard's Hispanic Office at 330-253-5364.
TAMALES MEXICANOS
For the meat filling:
1 package chicken breasts or thighs, with bones and skin attached (approximately 3 breasts or 4 thighs)
Salt
Water for poaching
For the salsa verde:
1 lb. tomatillos, husks removed
1/2 lb. jalapeno peppers, stemmed
1/2 medium yellow onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic
Salt to taste
For the tamales
1 package corn husks
1 package (4.4 lbs.) instant corn masa mix for tamales (masa de harina)
1 lb. vegetable shortening, melted
2 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. baking powder
10 to 12 cups reserved liquid from cooking chicken, supplemented with water if necessary
To prepare the salsa verde, place the tomatillos, peppers, onion, garlic and salt in a food processor or blender and pulverize into a sauce, adding a small amount of water if needed to reach a salsa consistency. Set aside.
Place chicken pieces in a 3-quart saucepan, fill with cold water and season with salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through.
Remove chicken from liquid, reserving cooking water. Cool chicken, remove bones and skin and discard them, then shred chicken meat. To the cooking water add enough additional water to make 12 cups of liquid.
While chicken is cooking, open package of corn husks and soak husks in a large bowl of hot water for at least half an hour to soften. When soft, drain and pick through to remove any strings or other debris. Sort through husks and set aside ones that are too small to stuff. Reserve these smaller husks for lining your pan.
Place masa de harina in a large bowl, add salt and baking powder, about half the reserved chicken cooking water and the melted shortening.
Using your hands, mix masa together until it begins to form a dough, adding more liquid as needed. You may not have to use all 12 cups of liquid. Dough is ready when all ingredients are thoroughly combined and dough is soft and will hold together without crumbling.
To assemble the tamales, take a husk and spread it open in the palm of your hand. Spread about half a cup of the tamale dough inside the husk. Top with some shredded chicken, and then with a generous spoonful of salsa.
Fold in sides of husk to cover fillings, then fold pointed end of husk over, leaving the wider end open. Repeat until all dough is used up. If a husk is too small to close completely, take a smaller husk and wrap over it.
Place about an inch of cold water into the bottom of a large stock pot or soup kettle. Take a smaller stainless steel bowl and invert it inside the kettle. A steamer insert in the pot also can be used. Fill the area around the bowl with reserved small corn husks.
Take finished tamales and arrange standing up (open side up) on top of husks inside kettle. Once all tamales are lined up in pot, cover top of tamales loosely with plastic wrap. This will help the tamales to steam better.
Put a lid on the pot, and cook, over medium heat, for 30 to 40 minutes until tamale dough is steamed through. Tamales are done when the dough no longer sticks to the husk and the husk easily peels away from the tamale.
Unwrap tamales from husks before eating. Serve with additional salsa.
Makes 30 to 40 tamales; 50 or more appetizer size.
— Alma Silva, Akron
Lisa A. Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or labraham@thebeaconjournal.com.
Where to find it
Ingredients like masa de harina and dried corn husks needed for authentic Mexican tamales can be found at the following locations:
--San Miguel, 158 E. Tallmadge Ave., Akron, 330-535-4004.
--La Michoacana, 1448 Copley Road, Akron, 330-864-0565.
--La Loma Supermarket, 421 Darrow Road, Akron 330-784-9300 (expected to open within the week).
--Dave's Market, 871 E. Exchange St., Akron 330-253-8957.p>
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Hudson, OH
Posted 12:34 PM, 12/09/2009
I grew up in Texas, and my 2 sisters who are still there make tamales for Christmas eve. Thanks for the recipe and the information; maybe I'll try making them myself!
