Tamale temptations
This popular portable treat is everywhere from barbecue joints to steakhouses and Mexican restaurants.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Not many menu items can comfortably keep company with both camarones a la diabla and a smothered pulled pork sandwich, often because you’d be hard pressed to find both of those on the same menu. But you’re likely to find one common listing paired with either: the hot tamale.
Like a distant relative far removed from the main branch of the family tree, this mainstay Latin American food holds a place of high reverence in the fine tradition of Southern cooking as well, right alongside the hollowed staples of catfish and ’cue. Whether out of custom or because it’s come to be expected, a great many mom-and-pop shops, and even larger chains, offer tamales with the rest of their regional cuisine — and the public keeps eating them up.
But how did this ubiquitous food come to find a home in the heart of Dixie so long before modern commercialism gave us countless eateries with a decidedly south of the border feel?
Well, there’s no definitive answer to that question, but the long study of Amy Evans offers some insight. Evans is a researcher with the Southern Foodways Alliance, part of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture on the campus of the University of Mississippi, and she has spent years traveling up and down the Mississippi Delta collecting oral histories of the tamale. There, the tamale is as second nature as a sandwich, she said, and her extensive interviews show that old-timers can recall seeing them sold in restaurants, out of kitchens and even off carts on the street corner for time out of mind.
Among the many suppositions for how that came to pass, said Evans, is the theory that Mexican migrant workers brought the tamale with them in the early part of the 20th century and shared them with other field hands. Compact and made from ingredients that were accessible and cheap, the tamale caught on as a lunch that could be packed in the morning and stay hot into the afternoon. And when the weather turned cold and migrant workers moved on, the locals began making and selling tamales themselves.
Of course, these travelers may have left their tamales in other locales, but at least one local restaurant “world famous” for its tamales owes its roots to the Delta: Doe’s Eat Place at Markham and Ringo streets in Little Rock. Descended from the original Doe’s in Greenville, Miss., Doe’s tamales are of the southern tradition: wrapped in paper instead of corn husks, filled with beef and served with a spicy chili.
A similar style can be found at several local eateries, from Izzy’s on Ranch Road in west Little Rock, where theirs are served in a husk, covered with chili and paired with cheese dip, to Jo-Jo’s Bar-B-Q just off North Hills Boulevard in Sherwood, which also smothers their tamales with a chili that is both spicy and sweet, then tops them with a delicious addition: yellow cheese.
Evans said these sorts of variations are to be expected. As the recipes were shared and changed hands, entrepreneurs — who may be black cafe owners or immigrants who came up from New Orleans in the post-Reconstruction era — did their own tweaking to find a taste they like.
That also helps explain the divergence between the Delta style and the Mexican tradition. Evans said the addition of chili may well have come from the Delta preference for simmering instead of steaming tamales. Way back when, as they cooked, the flavor seeped into the juices they cooked in, which also caught any meat that came out of the wrap, and eventually consumers started asking for tamales served with the juice. The theory goes that the juice finally gave way to chili.
But for the traditionalists out there, the Mexican tamale is well represented, even here in the deep South, at places like Taqueria Las Delicias on Camp Robinson Road in North Little Rock. Stuffed with pork and served with a muy caliente salsa verde, these authentically Mexican tamales are entirely different. Close akin are those served at local Mexican places, like Señor Tequila, which also uses pork but smothers theirs in a “special sauce” that’s chili-like in taste and spice, but thicker in consistency. It comes served with rice and refried beans.
A word of warning, though: Don’t bother trying to figure out which is best. Why waste that energy when you can instead appreciate the diversity? That’s the lesson of the tamale: It’s going to be different according to whatever company it keeps, but you can be pretty sure it’s going to be good wherever it’s found.
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