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Tamale town

Sunset, Dec, 2004 by Peter Fish

For a moment, the parade rolling down Oasis Street in Indio, California, could be any hometown extravaganza. Here come the high-school bands in their furry shako hats and the drill teams in sequined magenta, the local politicos in flag-bedecked Cadillacs and the local DJs in Mustangs. Then comes a float bearing a mariachi band that plays a sweet, sorrowful song, and there, waving from the back of the float is ... a giant tamale.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

That was when I knew I was in the right place: the Indio International Tamale Festival, held every December in this desert town east of Palm Springs.

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Many people will claim that in elegance of design the egg is the perfect food, but those people are wrong. It is the tamale, the cornhusk-wrapped, masa-dough concoction that is Mexico's gift to the mouths of the world. Like the egg, the tamale is pleasingly portable, its reward tucked within a protective covering. But while breaking an egg is an awkward, brittle proposition, the unveiling of a tamale offers pure sensory delight: the stripping away of the cornhusk to reveal the tender masa and then the savory filling within. As John Rivera Sedlar, chef, author, and tamale philosopher king, writes, "Tamales have got it all--everything I know I have ever wanted in a simple little package."

Now in its 13th year, the Indio International Tamale Festival was started almost on a whim, Indio mayor Jacquie Bethel tells me. But it turned out that holding a tamale festival in December--tamales and Christmas have a long, happy marriage--was a sound marketing strategy. Today, Indio's festival draws more than 100,000 people. And while it's true that the festival offers other distractions--T-shirts and jewelry and those carnival rides that look like an invitation to six months in intensive care--the main focus remains tamales. More than 200 vendors sell an estimated 300,000 tamales over the festival's two days.

Undoubtedly the largest tamale visible is the 6-foot-long tamal zacahuil, which John Rivera Sedlar oversees. Sedlar, who earlier this year started the Tamale Museum at Orange County's Mission San Juan Capistrano, says a visit to Veracruz, Mexico, inspired the banana leaf-wrapped behemoth, which steams in a cooker for four to six hours before it's devoured.

But size is not everything. For sheer popularity, no tamale rivals those produced at legendary Grandma Lupe's Authentic Tamales. Grandma Lupe's, a festival stalwart since the mid-1990s, has so many fans, the line for her tamales extends two blocks. While you wait, you can peruse a fact sheet that answers the FAQs at Grandma Lupe's. How long do I have to wait? Why don't you have two cashiers to expedite filling orders? Why doesn't Grandma Lupe use bigger pots to cook more tamales at one time? The answer to all of these questions is, basically, that Grandma Lupe knows what she's doing and you can't hurry a good tamale.

Eventually it was time to present the awards for best tamales. Prizes are given to commercial and noncommercial tamale cooks in two categories: traditional and gourmet (those chocolate or strawberry or pumpkin numbers). As for what the 10 or so judges seek in a tamale, judge Wayne Brooks told me, "Initially you look at the way it's wrapped--nice and tight or loose and clumsy. You want a pleasing aroma. You look at the texture and the consistency, and then the flavor. You ask, is there love and care taken with it?"

The winners were announced. Grandma Lupe's won--yet again--in the Traditional Commercial category, and the Indio Christian Academy won for Noncommercial Gourmet, and a number of other fine institutions won for their tamales. I can testify that all the winning tamales were good, because over the course of the long, carbohydrate-stuffed day, I had sampled all of them. I wasn't sure I could even fit back into my car, but I didn't mind. Love and care: That's what you want in a food item--that and a large plastic bag to carry a dozen more tamales to the family at home.

INFO: The 13th Annual Indio International Tamale Festival will take place Dec 4-5 in Indio, CA (www.tamalefestival.org).

Tamale town

Sunset, Dec, 2004 by Peter Fish

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