I have already mentioned it, but I REALLY love to cook and am facinated with foreign cousine! My love of food has really allowed me to connect with all sorts of people, and jump right into different cultures. The other night we were visiting a family, and the mother was making tamales to sell at her stand the next day. I asked if I could help, and she was thrilled! She put one of her traditional aprons on me (not that it helped, I still made a mess!) and set me to work!
First she showed me how to put the rice paste in the middle of the banana leave, add a piece of chicken, and sauce. You stir it all together until the mixture is well blended.
Then you fold the banana leaf in a special way, shaking the mixture to the bottom and folding over the ends.
She showed me how to make the first one, then she left me to do the rest. It was so much fun! By the fourth or fifth I was feeling pretty confident, and they started to look more like they should! By the time the night was over I had made nine, and was ridiculously pround of my small stack of tamales!
The family told me that now I can marry a Guatemalan since I can make tamales! Small problem, I don´t actually know how to make the rice paste or the sauce, but I do enjoy assembling them! She told me that the next day she mentioned that a Gringa had made the tamales, and they all sold really fast :-) Guess I´m a natural!
1 comment:
Fun! I'd be interested to taste your Gringa tamales to see how they compare to the tamales we buy twice a month from our Mexican tamale man. :)
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