TAMALES

Where did they come from, how did they wind up in a glass jar and where did they go?

            Once again we have to look back to get the true story of tamales. We have to go back eight or ten thousand years when Andy Aztec was really getting tired of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches his wife Emma always fixed for him to take on his hunting trips.

            He came home from one of those hunting trips and threw a flamingo down on the table and told her to chop it up and make him something different for the next hunt.

            Emma had a crock full of masa, a starchy dough that she was going to make pancakes with. (I have already told you enough about pancakes) She chopped up the flamingo added some onions and spices and rolled it up in the masa. Then she wrapped the whole thing in a corn husk and steamed it.

            She packed several of them into his lunch pouch the next time he went hunting. When he returned he gave Emma a big kiss and a swat on the behind telling her that the flamingo tarts were delicious but that the coating on them was hard to chew and almost indigestible. She told him that the corn husk was supposed to be removed before eating.

            “That is a great idea, it will make them so much better. What do you call them?” he asked. “So’s I can tell the guys.”

            She thought about if for a minute. The Aztec word, tamalii, came to mind.   It meant “wrapped food.” They are called “Tamales.” she smiled.

            The Derby company put them up in glass jars because eight of them fit perfectly and they looked good.

            The company name possibly is associated with the Kentucky Derby.  The Tamale is the dish that best embodies "the backside" of the Derby, where all those that work with the horses live and work. Most of them are from Central America, and due to the migratory nature of the job and a lack of kitchen access, they rely on hot plates and crockpots to re-create their traditional cuisine.

            When I was a kid, the Derby glass jars of tamales were readily available There were always a couple of jars in the pantry. Ready to be popped open for lunch or a late night snack. You just heated them up and unrolled them on top a piece of rye bread and  added some horse radish.

            I haven’t seen any of those glass jars around for quite some time but recently my wife visited a specialty market out in Hartwell and brought home two “cans” of Derby Tamales. There were eight of them in each can, just like the jars used to hold. They were delicious.

            Later my wife looked more closely at those cans. The tamales we had were packed around the beginning of this century but they didn’t make us sick. So let’s hear it for preservatives.

            Derby went out of business about the time they canned those tamales so no mo tamales.

            Oh sure, all the Mexican restaurants serve tamales but they are big round things in real corn husks with real mixtures of fresh ground meat, vegetables and spices. They aren’t any thing like those paper wrapped, cornmeal covered, mystery stuffed beauties we used to get from a glass jar.

            If you are as old as I am you might remember, during the thirties, the Molly Man at Eighth and State. He stood at his cart beside the bank building and sold hot tamales. “Molly, Molly, Hot Tomale, get em while dere hot Tomale,” He would sing.

            It was always a treat, the nights my Dad would close the bar early and take me down to see the Molly Man. His tamales were a lot like the glass jar kind, but way better.   

            

Fun Food Facts and Fables by the Grumpy Gourmet

This morning I cooked up some pancakes. I’m good at pancakes, but this morning I was using some batter that I had prepared a couple of days ago and stored in the refrigerator. My batter had thickened so I added a little milk (secret – never put water into a pancake batter) and, of course, got it too thin.

There is an old saying that the first pancake never turns out right. Well, I fried three of them and none turned out right. They were the ugliest mishmash of pancakes you have ever seen, but they were still delicious. As I may have said earlier, I’m good at pancakes.

As I sat there eating them I got to wondering how pancakes came to be and decided to write the history of pancakes. If you have ever read anything I have written, you are probably aware that I am not big on research so, of course, I didn’t look anything up. I just went to my computer and started writing.

THE HISTORY OF PANCAKES

Way back, thirty or forty thousand years ago (apologies to any of you “Creationists” out there), Alley Oop—wait, I’d best I change that, the name is probably still under copyright. I will start over.

About thirty or forty thousand years ago, a cave man named Biff was out with the gang hunting for an Azendohsaurus. These beasts were big and had a lot of meat on them. They were also rather stupid, very small brains for the size of them. And they were pretty slow, easy prey for the hunters.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any around so Biff and the boys had a bad day.

Agnes, Biff’s wife, or I guess she would be considered his mate since marriage hadn’t been invented yet, had been out foraging and gathering. She had laid some cattails and ferns and other green stuff out on a rock while she thought about what to do with it.

When Biff returned he was angry and frustrated with the results of the hunt. When Agnes asked him how his day went, he went into a frenzy and took a swing at her with his club. Agnes had been in this kind of predicament before and she was very agile. She ducked and Biff missed, only to take out his frustration on the gatherings on the rock. He beat and beat on them, pulverizing everything there. He threw down his club, and as was his solution to almost any problem, he took a nap.

Agnes looked at the powdered heap and knew that they were desperate for something to eat so she gathered up the dusty ingredients from the rock and added a little water. (Cows and goats hadn’t been invented yet and dinosaurs were hard to milk, so using water in this case was acceptable.)

Agnes was a lot smarter than Biff, females had always been smarter than males, but males were bigger and stronger and did their best to keep the females subservient. This attitude prevailed for a long time so women just smiled inwardly and kept their silence.

Biff and Agnes always kept a fire going in their cave. It was a necessity. It kept them warm and kept critters out of the place. Agnes was the very first person to consider cooking something on it.

She found a nice flat rock and lodged it over the fire, as soon as it was good and hot she poured the mixture of the powder and water on it. The batter settled into little round blobs and when they started bubbling, she flipped them over using a spatula that she had earlier carved out of tree limb.

The result was a bunch of little, brown round things, almost a hundred of them that she immediately named Flat Eddies after her eldest son.

She added a little wild honey and called Biff. He tried one and roared. Biff was not overly articulate but she knew that he liked them. 

He gobbled down over half of them, smiled and went back to bed. Agnes ate a few and she thought they were good too—a relief after eating so much raw meat. She smiled and started to clean up as women were want to do for centuries to come.

By the time Biff and Agnes passed on, the Eddie Cake had found popularity among those early people. It was already being called by many different names but became a supplement to their early diet either as a side dish to their dinosaur steaks or, in hard times, their only source of sustenance.

But the pancake didn’t stop here in the Stone Age, its popularity continued. As civilization progressed, their popularity grew. Greeks and Romans ate pancakes, sweetened with honey just like early man ate them.

During the Elizabethan era the chefs of the time added spices, rosewater, wines, and fruit, and they were especially favored on Shrove Tuesday, a day of feasting and partying before the beginning of Lent. The church, realizing the evils of anything so delicious and objecting to Shrove Tuesday being popularly called Pancake Day, created mandates.

The populace knew that pancakes were a good way to use up perishables like eggs, milk, and butter, and they were delicious so the mandates were mostly ignored.

Pancakes had a lot of different names and there were a lot of different recipes. In colonial America they were known as hoe cakes, johnnycakes, or flapjacks and were made with buckwheat or cornmeal and served with a generous helping of molasses.

Thomas Jefferson really liked pancakes. His French chef, Etienne Lemaire, made his pancakes by pouring dollops of thin batter into a hot pan. The result was what Lemaire called

“panne-quaiques” and are what we would call crepes.

Whatever they are called, they are little, round, flat hunks of fried dough that have been around since Agnes threw batter on a hot, flat rock. And the key word is flat. “Flat as a pancake,” is an old saying. I once tried to make round puffy pancakes and they just were not as good.

BLACK COW PANCAKES

Ingredients

2oz plain flour    

Pinch of salt    

1 medium egg    

3 oz milk 

3oz root beer (crème soda, preferably Dr. Browns, may be substituted)

Oil, for frying   

Powdered sugar    

Ice cream   

 Directions

 Put flour into a bowl and stir in the salt.  Lightly beat together the egg and liquid. Pour over the flour mixture, a little at a time. Whisk it well, into a smooth a smooth pancake batter.

Heat a frying pan and very lightly grease the base of it with a piece of paper napkin dipped in oil. Pour a thin layer of batter into the pan.  Cook until it starts to bubble and the edges start to curl back. Flip the pancake over.  Cook the pancake briefly on this side, then slide it out on to a plate.

Cook the rest of the mixture in the same way. Allow pancakes to cool slightly then sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar.