As I unwrap the husk, sweet corn aromas spiked with pungent pasilla chiles swirl around me. With the touch of my fork against the light, spongy masa, rivulets of dark red chili sauce gush forth. My first freshly made, hot-from-the-steamer tamale is a revelation.
Like just about everyone in Los Angeles, I've happily eaten tamales of every shape and flavor, in styles from all around Latin America. Whether wrapped in dried corn husks, banana or avocado leaves, filled with pork, peppers or chocolate, this traditional Christmas holiday treat is available here all year long in a seemingly endless variety.
But this was the first time I'd waited by the stove for my own tamales to cook, and then, with the masa still puffed full of hot steam, devoured one after another after another. Compared with the typical dense, relatively dry tamales we buy in stores or Mexican restaurants, which have to be reheated, these were moist packets of creamy masa still alive with flavor -- and plenty of saucy filling.
Eating freshly made, just-steamed tamales is a pleasure usually reserved for the Latin American families who have passed recipes from generation to generation and shown them off at tamale-making parties during the Christmas holidays. That's how Alice Tapp and her daughter, the owners of Tamara's Tamales in Venice, perfected their techniques.
Alice's Mexican grandmother taught her how to make tamales when she was a little girl in East Los Angeles; she loved to join her grandmother's friends selling the corn husk-wrapped treats after Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Collecting tamale recipes and chronicling the centuries-old traditions for herself and her American children became a lifelong hobby.
I'm from Kansas, not East L.A., and unfortunately I don't have a Mexican grandmother. So I asked Alice to teach me how to make a great tamale. We settled on red pork chili, traditional for Christmas but delicious anytime.
Family style
Alice, her daughter Tamara Tapp and Alice's sister Diane Tarango (the tamale sauce expert in the family) join me in the tamale shop's kitchen to let me in on the secrets.
Buy the right masa, the women all chime. Fresh, unprepared tamale masa is available at any Latino market. It's finer than tortilla masa because it's ground three or four times, while tortilla masa is ground only once. "You want it wet, and dated for freshness," Alice says. "If it smells the least bit sour, it's not good."
