Christmas Tamales!

Tamales are a Christmas tradition in Costa Rica. It's quite a process and is usually turned into a party with everyone in the family participating (or all the women anyhow!) So our friend Jackie decided we would have our own tamale making party.

We definitely did it the easy way since her Tica assistant gathered together all the ingredients and did the major part of the preparations in advance. When we all gathered yesterday afternoon, she had the banana leaves cut to size and spread out on one counter. On the kitchen island were bowls of prepared pork, rice with red chiles and peas, and a bowl of cooked and diced mixed green beans and carrots. There was also a large bowl of prepared "masa," a mushy corn meal mixture.
We each got to take a turn (this included not just Jackie, Emma and me, but our husbands Joe, Jon & Gene, equal opportunity kitchen such as it was!) as our "profesora" patiently showed us how to spread a large dollup of the prepared masa onto a double sheet of banana leaves, then a dollup of the rice mixture and a spoonful of the veggie mixture. Next a couple strips of pork, and then the wrapping process.
We learned to wrap them, folding the leaves over in a precise manner so that the stuff would stay inside when cooked. Two tamales were placed together, seams facing each other and then tied together with twine. After being steamed in water for about 1/2 an hour, the tamales were ready for sampling. And sample we did! Not only did we have a great afternoon with our friends Jackie and Joe at their beautiful cabin in the mountains, but there are now six more tamale experts in our part of Costa Rica!



A Toast to La Profesita!