Grandma Ene made sure I
had the recipe for her tamales. She stopped
and waited for me to write each step down before adding another.
“Una cucharra de sal y
una poquita mas porque se pierde cuando los cocinas.” Add a little more salt than usual because they lose their saltiness
while you cook them, she said.
I think she may have
known she would not last forever and none of us, including my mother, had ever
bothered to learn her recipe for tamales. I wrote it all down, translating “handfuls”
into table- or teaspoons and “tanto asi” into measuring cups.
The filling was made with
pork and beef mixed together in a red chili pepper sauce and a whole box of
raisins thrown into the simmering pot. The
raisins were an Old-World addition that cooled the hotness of the spices. She supervised the making of the dainty
tamales, a thin smear of corn masa inside a corn husk and a stingy tablespoon
of meat tucked into the center. She made sure they all looked and felt the
same.
The Christmas after she
passed away, we decided to make Grandma Ene’s tamales. How hard could it be? We labored over the process, using the recipe
I had written down a few years earlier. We laughed because our tamales were of
all sizes and weights but we got them done, knowing Ene was looking down at us
from heaven, shaking her head.
We tasted them and were
pleased with our results but something was missing. Maybe a little more salt? A
little less red chile? We all preferred the
dainty tamales over the husky ones. Then we realized what was missing.
We missed her supervising
our efforts, handing out orders, redoing the fat tamales into trimmer versions.
She missed her patient voice, showing us over and over how to make tamales.
We never tried to make
them again, instead we trekked to a tamaleria and bought them by the
dozen. Even when we find some that claim
to make half pork/half beef/with raisins, they don’t taste the same.
There are just some
things, moments, and people who cannot be replaced.
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