Do we dare host another tamalada?

Can Thanksgiving holidays be only a few weeks away?  I am becoming concerned about how to entertain out of town guests.  A typical groaning board of Thanksgiving treats and marathon hours of TV football games will keep everyone engaged on Thursday.  But how about Friday?  “Do we dare try another tamalada (tamale making)?”  I wondered.  

Bittersweet memories of our last tamalada several years ago come to mind. We had decided to streamline the traditional process.  My chuck wagon cook husband Wayne always has a cooked brisket or two in the freezer, so we substituted the typical pork for beef.   I usually spend an afternoon making sauce by hand from the dried red chile pods, but this time I used a package of freeze dried chile and reconstituted it.

We had seven people in an assembly line in the kitchen, with my husband as head chef, barking out orders about how thick to spread masa (dough) on the husks, and our son Clayton as sous chef, demonstrating the best husk rolling and folding technique.  I was relegated to selecting wide, sturdy husks and draining them in the sink (truly an art form!).  Guests were allowed to do whatever job they felt comfortable doing.  Soon the little tamale packages were stacked in the pot and placed on the stove.

Now, how long before we could eat tamales?   The chile con queso that I had prepared to tide the guests over had long since disappeared, and the jar of jamaica (hibiscus flower water) was almost gone.  My various recipes and notes gave a range for cooking tamales from 30 minutes to 90 minutes.  Checking the tamales meant reaching into a steam-filled pot and unwrapping a tamal (the singular form of the word in Spanish) to see if the husk would pull away from the masa, not a job for the faint-hearted.  Finally, “ten more minutes” announced my husband to the expectant guests.  About two dozen tamales were consumed in a matter of minutes, most of them pulled directly from the pot and consumed standing by the stove.

After our guests departed, tamale husks littered the kitchen, red chile sauce spotted the kitchen counters and stained the blender, and leftover tamales cooled in every conceivable spot.  We stuffed the tamales into freezer bags, labeled them, and put them in the freezer for future feasts.  “Do you think everyone had a good time?”  Wayne asked me as we wearily climbed the stairs to bed.  

Now the big decision is whether we want to host a tamalada this year.  I'll keep you posted!  Do you have tamale making experiences to share?