Tamales – Joe Pastry

Making Banana Leaf Tamales

Rick Bayless calls these Juchitán-style tamales, which is a word I love to say: “hoochie-TAHN.” Juchitán is a city located in the southeastern Mexican state of Oaxaca (also fun to say: wah-HOCK-ah). It’s a town known for food, art, cross-dressing and indigenous languages. Don’t ask me about the third thing, it’s a long story…Mrs. Pastry will tell you all about it if you ask her, she was in Juchitán in November on a research project.

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Making Classic Tamales

Now just to be clear, I don’t have to eat the wrapping too, do I? I remember quite clearly asking that question when I was first confronted with non-convenience store tamales. How the heck do you eat these things? It’s a fair question for any inexperienced tamale-eater, since very few foods land on our dinner plates still in the wrapping…unless of course Dad got lazy dishing up the Happy Meals at the kitchen table this week (something you can pretty much count on at our house).

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