On 2013-05-03 21:09:38 +0000, Janet Bostwick said:
> Switching gears a little bit, it was my understanding/remembrance that
> there is a separate tamale tradition in the American Southeast. I
> just don't recall who the immigrants were and when that provided the
> tamales. Anybody?
There are many different traditions. The tamales I got in North vs.
South Texas and in Southern California all have signifiant differences.
And then the ones that show up on our door around Christmas have even
more distinctions.
If you google it, I bet you'll find all kinds of different stuff. Some
of it will suffer the worst of "sniff sniff" gauche nuances that make
them GHASTLY unauthentic. But most of them taste pretty great when well
done.
And the various parts of central American have significat distinctions as well.
For future reference, this place has the best tamales on the planet,
though they might not be close to you:
Sariņana's Tamale Factory:
http://tinyurl.com/d8xzfy8
Folks blabber about their other stuff (tacos, menudo), but 90% of their
business is tamale's sold to the local folk that don't have computers.
Santa Ana is 80% Hispanic, most of them from Jalisco, Guerrero, Sinaloa
and Baja.