The traditional Christmas dinner in Costa Rica does not center around a turkey like it does in Canada, instead it’s tamales. This year we were extremely lucky to have been invited to our new friend Eduardo’s in-law’s house to help in the traditional preparation of them. We met Eduardo through our good friends, the Gonzoles family, and along with his in-laws (who we simply called abuelo & abuela or grandpa & grandpa) was Eduardo’s wife Elena, their 2 kids Emanuel (8 years old), and Emilliano (1 year), 2 young cousins around 8-10 years old, and Elena’s brother and his girlfriend.
Every family has their own special way of making tamales, and they joked with us that every family always says theirs are the best. Eduardo’s family recipe is something like this: The base is “masa” (a paste of corn and potatoes and abuela’s secret spices) and to that you place on top pieces of meat of your choice (often pork) then vegetables like carrots, red peppers, green beans, onions, etc. To that you add a spoonful of homemade salsa-type tomato sauce and a dollop of spicy pickled vegetables in a mustard sauce. Then all of this is wrapped up in a banana leaf into a small brick shaped bundle. To cook them, you either steam them, or drop the whole thing into a pot of boiling water.
However, it’s a long, hard day’s work to do all of this! (It puts us to shame when we complain about the amount of work it takes to prepare a turkey dinner.) We showed up at 10 in the morning and didn’t leave until 5:30, and they were nowhere near finished making them all.
We started with a pile of huge banana leaves that Eduardo had collected previously right from his in-laws “finca”, or farm. We had to put them over an open fire to soften the leaves, then we had to remove the large central vein from the leaves. Once that was done we brought the leaves into the kitchen to clean them and cut them to size. Everybody gets into the act (including our kids!) and they tell us that this is often where the family gossips about whoever is not there to help.
While we are doing all of this, abuela is busy boiling potatoes, preparing the corn meal, and putting the “masa” all together into huge pots. These are then put onto 2 cinder blocks with an open fire below to heat until it bubbles. The fire was right outside the door of the open-air kitchen and so we spent a large portion of the day in smoke. Megan loved it! While the masa is cooking, everybody takes turns with a huge paddle stirring the pot. During all of this, abuelo has finished his work in the chicken coop and shows up with his accordion to entertain us with some music while we work.
So, the first pot starts to bubble and I’m thinking to myself how the heck are they going to get this huge, hot pot back into the kitchen. Abuela comes out with a single towel and gives it to Eduardo and I’m thinking “Is she going to make him carry it himself?” But no, Eduardo uses the towel like a pot holder, and abuela just uses her bare hands and they carry it together into the kitchen. This pot was not only very heavy, but smoking hot and she had no trouble with it. An amazingly tough old gal! She was on her feet all day doing very demanding work and the whole while she was just wearing an old pair of flip-flops! Plus she even found time in between doing all of the prep work and the assembly of the tamales to sneak away for a quick shower.
It wasn’t all work, however. In between jobs, Eduardo would show us around the finca. He is a very passionate guy who loves to share details about the Costa Rican plants & animals.
The finca is actually located within walking distance from our house, and like so many properties here is hidden behind an unassuming gate off the main road. They have a small number of cows that the kids had fun hand-feeding. (Amazingly, the cows seemed to love whole oranges, peel and all, and meter-long stalks of sugar cane). They also had a couple of chicken coops, each with it’s own rooster, which provides them with eggs and chicken.
They grew corn, mostly to feed the chickens, beans, sugar cane, oranges, yucca, and at least 7 different varieties of banana! (I had no idea there were so many!). There were also a couple of medicinal plants growing, some very hot chilli peppers, orchids, and a plant with a very rough sand-paper like leaf that previous generations used to scour pots.
They also have a sugar cane press on the finca and Eduardo cut down 2 ripe stalks about 10 feet long and stripped them of their leaves. He then cleaned them and put them through the press and these 2 stalks produced a whole gallon of “jugo de cana”, or sugar cane juice. He put ice into glasses and poured it straight in, and we all had a glass. It was a little too sweet for us, but a very cool experience.
Anyway, back to the tamales. When everything is ready, the idea is to get an assembly line going, but with so many inexperienced Canadians around, that idea kind of broke down. How it’s supposed to work is one person lays out the banana leaves, one to puts on the masa, one or two to put in the ingredients, then one wraps and another ties. They always tie 2 together into one bundle called ‘pinas’ which means ‘pairs’. We marked ours by tying a corn husk on each bundle so they didn’t get mixed up with the others when they went into the pot. Finally, the huge pots are back on the smoky fire right outside to cook the ones they want for Christmas. The rest are frozen. The cooked ones are then cooled and refrigerated, and heated up on Christmas day.
All in all it was an amazing day, and one I’ll remember for a long time. Eduardo’s family was very welcoming to us, seemed very relaxed, laughed a lot and got a lot done in a really low stress manner. How’s the stress level at your house with 5 days left till Christmas? We ended up with a dozen pairs of tamales, the Gonzo’s probably had at least that, if not more, and Eduardo told me they made 208, and worked until 10 that night!
The kids take a soccer break
Nathan feeding whole oranges to a cow
Traditional Costa Rican coffee maker
Our Haul!
