NONFICTION  - 
​          WITH A THEME OF WORK 

While the pork simmered on the stove,  -  -  - 
                            Photo by Weebly.com                                    

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Joe's Tamale Parlor
by  Lucy Sweeney

The Jennings moved to their dream house, 175 Teddy Avenue, San Francisco, early in 1951. It was built with Joe’s GI loan, custom-designed with features my parents had always longed for while living in the Victorian flat on Rhode Island Street. Mel was 10, I was 11. We loved the new house.
 
My father Joe encouraged us to voice our ideas and opinions. Mel and I suggested that for Thanksgiving in 1951, we really wanted steak. Steak was exotic, steak was expensive. We had only dined on steak at Alfred’s restaurant on Broadway, with the snooty waiters in tuxedos. How much of this was my father planting ideas, and how much was our idea—looking back, who knows? But my mother Mary agreed; she had a new baby and a new house. It was far easier cooking a steak than plucking and singeing pin feathers from a turkey that would require constant attention.
 
The next holiday season, Dad, Mel and I wanted homemade tamales for dinner. My mother agreed, but said that we would all have to help because the tamale process was an all-day affair. I guess my parents divided the shopping between them. At the nearby regular grocery store, you could buy the pork roast, canned olives, pinto beans, rice, raisins, and sugar. But you had to go to the Mexican grocery store in the Mission for the masa (the corn meal dough), lard, chile sauce, hojas (the dried corn husks) and canela (sticks of cinnamon bark).
 
We began early in the morning on Christmas Eve. While the pork simmered on the stove, and the raisins softened in a bowl, Mel and I soaked the hojas to make them supple. We towel dried them, then sorted them. The large, whole hojas were prized, as they would wrap an entire tamale. The smaller hojas could be pieced together to wrap a tamale. The shreds were saved in a separate pile, and became the tie at the end of the delicacy.
 
Dad prepared the masa by mixing in the lard. A small portion was set aside for sweet tamales, a dessert item. In a large stockpot, he mixed masa, lard, sugar, soaked raisins, ground canela, and hot water. We would have dessert tamale for Christmas.

The masa for the pork tamales was a big production—masa, lard, water from the simmering pork, and salt. This was mixed in the baby’s enamel bathtub. It seemed that my dad was up to his elbows in masa. Finally, he approved the masa’s consistency. The pork roast was cut into cubes and shreds, and returned to the stove in the chile sauce while we ate lunch.

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​Then the fun began: spreading the masa on the center part of the hojas; next, placing meat with some sauce on the masa; then, adding a black olive or two to most of the tamales. If the hoja wasn’t wide enough, we just pieced it with another one, using the masa as glue. I couldn’t see how this flat, gross thing would turn into the plump tamale on a dinner plate. To close the tamales, we rolled them up, like a jelly roll. It still didn’t look like the edible version to me. Then we tied up each end of the tamale, where there was no masa on the hoja. Now the shape looked familiar. The sweet tamales, by contrast, were easy to close. A lump of masa was wrapped in an envelope of hoja that required only one tie.
 
Sometime during the day, uncle Tony DiAndrea, the nice Italian boy who married into the family, made an emergency run to our house. He brought a large kettle to add to Mary’s supply, for cooking the growing pile of tamales. When he saw us at work, he named the kitchen “Joe’s Tamale Parlor,” which we just loved. Who needed Roosevelt Tamale Parlor!
 
My parents steamed the tamales in batches, using the pressure cooker (without the pressure barrel on top) and various stockpots with the lids tied on with string. Each large pot had a penny in the bottom, water, and a support for the tamales. A penny rattling at the bottom of the pot meant that the water should be replenished. Joe and Mary maintained the water level by occasionally adding water from the steaming teakettle. The house smelled wonderful during these hours. Most of the tamales went into the refrigerator for the next day. I suppose all the relatives came over for Christmas dinner of tamales, beans and rice. That part has faded from my memory.
 
We ate some fresh tamales for dinner as a reward for all our hard work. The hoja was a limp wrapper, easily unrolled. Now I understood that the masa became a smooth, spongy shape around the succulent meat. And the sweet tamales were perfect for dessert with Mexican hot chocolate. I remember the fun of working hard to make something you really liked. It was great to be a part of the family effort at Joe’s Tamale Parlor.

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​Lucy Sweeney is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a major in Music. She remained a serious choral singer while working as a professional baker, performing with Masterworks Chorale. Upon her return to teaching, she performed with the Stanford Early Music Singers and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. Lucy discovered the joys of genealogy research when she retired. She edited Lozano, a book of stories about her extended family. With expert guidance from Barbara Rose Brooker at OLLI, Lucy wrote Silent Hero, the story of her father in World War II. Lucy and her grandson Adam are currently writing a family cookbook.

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