Members of the Mujeres de la Tierra collective prepare orders for tamales in their workshop in Milpa Alta. Andrea Murcia (CUARTOSCURO)
From the street to the white tablecloth restaurants there are many options to eat tamales in the Mexican capital.
Facing the Day of La Candelaria we made this small tribute to the traditional, popular, commercial and most controversial tamales of the city.
Here we celebrate Candlemas Day by eating tamales because that is what our indigenous origin dictates: tamales mean celebration and February 2 is the first of the year.
Many will raise their eyebrows, isn't it Three Kings' Day?
Yes, in the Catholic calendar, on the other hand, the indigenous people rule their holidays around the agricultural calendar.
They harvest the land in autumn and in the middle of winter they prepare it for a new cycle.
“We as Mexicas have always given thanks for the seeds received and blessed at the beginning of February,” says Emma Villanueva, creator of Casa Tlalmamatla, a collective dedicated to the cultivation of milpa —an agricultural method in which corn is planted surrounded by squash and beans, and together they provide nutrients to the land—, and to the transformation of their harvest into products such as tamales, tortillas and tlacoyos.
For more than 10 years, every Sunday Emma and her family have come from Tepetlixpa, a town on the slopes of the Popocatépetl volcano, to sell their products at the Mercado del 100, in the Roma neighborhood. He nixtamalizes the corn —he boils it in lime to enhance its nutritional qualities—, grinds it, turns it into dough and makes tamales as his mother taught him, who in turn learned from his mother. It's a recipe handed down for generations that Emma has modified: "I don't put butter on them, I make them with vegetable oil," adding that the secret to making them fluffy is to beat the dough a lot and be in a good mood, "if you're angry or a negative emotion are never sewn.
Emma's tamales respond to her mood and the season: “sometimes I have quelites or pumpkin;
sweets of fig, plum, apple, or whatever fruit there is”.
Her favorites are chicken with milpero green tomato sauce and for parties she makes them from ayocote, a black bean as big as broad beans, which is used in many ceremonial dishes from that region of Mexico.
She prepares them this way for the blessing of February and for the Day of the Dead, the other great tamale date in the Mexican calendar.
Like Emma, chef Ricardo Múñoz Zurita, a great promoter of Mexican gastronomy and owner of Azul Condesa and Azul Histórico, in Mexico City, says that, “on February 2, the largest number of tamales is eaten, but when it blooms and a great variety arises throughout the country is during the Day of the Dead”.
La Candelaria is a Judeo-Christian tradition to commemorate the purification of the virgin 40 days after the birth of Jesus and is the presentation of the child in the temple. In Mexico it is an imposition of the evangelization, which took place during the Viceroyalty, and a sign of the cunning of the Church to accommodate its festivities on important dates of the indigenous calendar.
Recent Mexican custom dictates that the February 2 tamaliza must be sponsored by the unlucky person who got a doll in the Rosca de Reyes (three plastic children are introduced into the dough representing the Three Wise Men). Here comes the ingenuity: that person is the "godfather" of the child God and that is why he has to pay for the tamales for the "christening". It is a humorous story, for Ricardo it is simplistic because "tamales have always been used in celebrations." He also asks to put an end to the mania of saying that they are mestizos, "it is the best way to disrespect our ancestral cultures, they are totally indigenous."
According to Ricardo, there is archaeological evidence of this preparation in the Mayan culture since the year 600, "it is a very old food, even older than the tortilla."
In addition, it was wrapped because it was a gift, "one of the big mistakes that chefs make, and I am going to correct it, is to serve the tamale open, the correct thing is to open it in the presence of the diner."
We owe a large part of contemporary indigenous gastronomy to the Aztecs, as Ricardo mentions that “they were amalgamating and hoarding absolutely everything that was done in the past.
By the year 1000 there were already tamales in many regions, evidently the meats, chiles and herbs were changing, depending on the place.
And he adds that, "the Spanish had a great contempt for our food, even so the tamale continued to evolve [during the viceroyalty], there was not a lost period."
Ricardo knows about 100 different types of tamales. An inexact figure because there are as many as different culinary traditions and variety of ingredients in Mexico. To find some really rich ones in Mexico City, either you are very lucky or you keep an eye out for a crowded corner, another simple idea is to follow Ricardo's advice: “the ones at the Ethiopian metro exit are excellent and the ones at Plaza de San Jacinto, they have little meat, but the dough is deliciously worked”.
In the tamale universe there are even some Gansito fillings, Ricardo decided not to label them as good or bad, he simply believes that "it is a decadence or lack of creativity of the cooks."
Los Tamalitos de la Balbuena, is a business located in the Balbuena neighborhood, popular for its strange fillings of Gansitos, Carlos V or Oreo Cookies.
And more than tasty, they are controversial.
Making a tamale is a delicate task, far removed from the concept of American
fast food
.
That was not an impediment so that in 1995, Amparo Espinosa created Tamalli (the Nahuatl name for tamale), a wholesale distribution chain for tamales and atole, including through digital applications.
The idea of Amparo was generated in response to a phenomenon caused by the commercial opening of the country in 1994. “At the end of the last century, there was an invasion of foreign pizza and hamburger franchises.
I thought 'how can we not have the facility to buy a Mexican product like that'.
I decided to give it a twist and bring the tamale to the needs of the inhabitants”, he explains.
The project has grown so much that in a month they make up to 30,000 and on Candlemas Day that amount is multiplied almost six times.
To size, Emma Villanueva makes 120 tamales every week and Tamalli 7,000.
Their plant is in the Valle neighborhood where they have industrialized some processes.
Even so, there is still no robot with the ability to arrange the dough on a sheet, fill it with slices with cheese, wrap it and tie it, that has to be done by several people by hand.
An art that tastes like glory, especially during the cold mornings of this capital.
“Give me a tamale and an atole, please”
The ritual of eating a tamale is completed if it is accompanied with atole. A culinary pleonasm, since atole is a drink made with corn dough. Another ancestral indigenous preparation that reached our days almost intact. It is made by diluting the dough in water until a thick consistency is achieved; In ancient times it was drunk like this, without other ingredients, then they spiced it with cocoa, chilies or honey. The importation of other ingredients made it more diverse, they added fruits, pinole, piloncillo, walnuts, etc. In some parts of the country it is drunk cold and is very popular in the morning due to its nutritional value.
The atole continued to evolve and although it preserved its essence, the disappearance of the nixtamal mills and the popularization of industrialized corn masses have made it difficult to find it in the cities.
Instead, cornstarch "atoles" abound, a flavored cornstarch flour.
Before buying it in any corner, it is worth verifying its origin and avoiding being given “atole con el dedo”.
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