Tonto is in My Freezer

Tonto is a tamale.  My neighbor Rocio invited us over last Friday for a family tamale-making fest, and now tonto is in my freezer.  You’re supposed to wait till Christmas to eat them, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.

The singular is ‘tamal’, actually, if you care to be linguistically correct.  And let me be the first to tell you that Costa Rican tamales are nothing like their Mexican cousins -- not a pig's head in sight (the Costa Rican's save that for the posole).  In fact, about all they have in common is masa.  Rocio’s family (I lost track of how many children, grandchildren, in-laws, friends and employees were floating around that evening.  Did I mention that I don’t speak Spanish?) informed us with great enthusiasm that every Central and South American country has its own variation of tamales, and every family within each country has its own recipes.

I want Rocio’s recipe.  Wow!

Rocio came over to my house in the afternoon to offer the invitation.  I thought it was for some sort of dinner party.  She took me over to her house and showed me the THREE employees hard at work already:  one young man was cutting plantain leaves into the appropriate size and shape; one woman was frantically washing enormous pots in the sink, and a second woman was stirring broth.

And I learned:  here’s what goes into a Costa Rican tamale:

Masa and mashed potatoes:  mixed with lots and lots of lard (“This is not a health food,” Rocio assured me.

Pork/Chicken broth:  cooked with more lard, garlic, thyme, and six hundred bay leaves in a pot my children could bathe in.  Mix this with the masa and mashed potatoes

More masa:  with achote (a coloring/flavoring agent), lots of lard, garlic, and salt

Pork and chicken:  that’s where the broth comes from

Rice cooked with chicken broth; capers added after cooking

Olives, prunes and strips of pickled peppers (for color).  Huh?

Still thinking we were going to a dinner party, my husband and I dressed appropriately, I made an apple pie (what goes with tamales???), and we brought a bottle of wine with us.  Well, the wine was a good choice.

When we arrived, Rocio handed us aprons and put us to work!  This was serious business!  She explained that the traditional time to make these is Christmas, but who has time at Christmas?  So we had lots of wine and guaro (a local drink made from sugar cane) and made tamales now.

First, a son (I never could keep all the names straight) arranged a sheet of plastic and two plantain leaves on a plate.  A daughter-in-law added a huge gob of masa and potatoes; a family friend added meat, and one olive.  Rocio spooned on some rice with capers. My husband Gary was responsible for the prunes.  My job was to put in the achote-colored masa and the peppers.  But then, we got a bit behind and I tried my hand at folding a few plantain leaves around the tamales (which were then tied up by the young man I’d seen earlier).

Maria Juana (who was the employee responsible for wrapping up the tamales) politely laughed at every single one of my efforts (and I hadn’t even had any wine yet!) and refolded every single one.  I finally learned my lesson and went back to draping a decorative pepper or two across each mound of masa/meat/rice/olive/prune.

And then we made the tontos.  At the end, when we were running out of ingredients, the call went out for the tonto:  the big, dumb tamale.  And everyone got to make his own just the way he liked it.  Juan Miguel liked lots of chicken.  Rocio liked lots of achote.  Me, I used lots and lots of achote masa (which I also ate in handfuls when no one else was looking) and six huge olives.  We passed them to the experts who folded the plantain leaves and tied them up, and then added a special colored string (everyone picked his own color), so we’d know whose tonto was whose.

My tonto has a pink string, and it’s sitting in my freezer right now.  I think about it all the time.  Because, after all the work was done, we actually got to eat a fresh tamal.

OH MY GOODNESS!!!  IT WAS SO GOOD!!!

I love Mexican tamales; they are a small passion of mine. But Costa Rican tamales, I must say, make their Mexican cousins look, well, quite pale and sickly, actually.

I am counting the days until Christmas, and it’s not for the presents, let me tell you!!