Tamalizzas!

Music, dances, festivals, sports, clothing, traditions, and of course, foods!

Most every country or culture on our planet that has made their staple on the world in one way or another has done so with one or more of the above components.

Growing up in my border city of Laredo, Texas, the society I lived in ran rampant with Mexican culture. After all, our city’s population is comprised of over 95% Mexican roots!

Even as a child, my first language was Spanish, and I was certainly no stranger to witnessing the magical movements of folklorico, the excitement and emotions of mariachi music, and the plentiful tastes and flavors of authentic comida mexicana.

Of course, tacos and burritos are only a small stepping stone into the delicious, food filled rabbit hole that is Mexican cuisine.

Anyone who's visited our quaint little border town has probably familiarized themselves with some of our local staples:

Pozole

Carne asada

Enchiladas

Menudo (for which we have an entire annual city festival dedicated to)

And of course, one of my personal favorites,

Tamales!

This, my friends, is where the hero of our story comes into play.

Imagine, if you will, the following components:

-Dried Corn Husks

What you see before you get to the actual meal. These are softened in water before adding the next two ingredients and getting steamed to delicious perfection. The corn husks themselves serve to enrich the flavor of the masa as they get cooked.

-Hand-made dough (masa)

A mix of nixtamalized corn flour, lard, salt, and tons of warm water continually mixed together, kneaded, and slammed against a table until it gets a consistency worthy of complimenting the main ingredients held within. The masa gets smeared onto the corn husks before adding the filler.

-The filler

A plethora of different things are smeared onto the masa to fill a tamal: Beans, jalapeños and cheese, piloncillo, chicken, deer meat, or pork, the latter three often mixed with either homemade red or green chile salsa.

Once these ingredients come together, they're wrapped comfortably in the corn husk, and steamed in a large pot called a tamalera for several hours, until they're ready to be utterly devoured and obliterated, one by one.

-

Growing up with my grandma, I often helped her create the masa for the tamales. Especially when she got older, as her arthritis made it difficult for her to pound the ever-living corn out of the masa the way she used to in her younger days.

Several years ago, one December night, in the week before Christmas, as we were finishing up our final batches of tamales, my grandma noted that there weren't going to be sufficient husks to use the rest of the masa and pork.

Just then, my brother walked in and asked if we could just order a pizza for lunch instead of having to wait several hours for the tamales to be out.

Naturally, the answer was no, and my brother was lucky not to have Grandma's chancla fly at him full-speed for even suggesting such blasphemy.

But… that somehow mutually clicked something in both our heads.

Without saying a word to each other about what we were about to try, I scoured through the kitchen drawers as she began collecting the leftover corn husks.

I pulled out a large pizza pan and brought it to the table.

Almost as if reading each other's minds, we began smearing the masa on the corn husks and cautiously laying them as flat as possible on the pizza pan, carefully making sure that they laid flat enough to cover the entirety of the pan.

Once the pan was covered, she brought over some of the salsa roja covered pork that was left, and we both began generously topping our brand new, experimental dish with the juicy pork.

After a bit of discussion, we ended up placing the pan in the oven for a about an hour.

The end result was a creation of sheer flavor:

A pizza, built with the ingredients of traditional tamales.

We called the household together, and placed the pizza on the table, as my grandma told my brother “Ahi esta tu pizza!" (“There's your pizza!")

To which I added “No es una pizza! Es una Tamalizza! (That's not a pizza! That's a tamalizza!)

Our delicious creation was a hit, and was thus, promptly devoured by the family.

That night, amongst the family, we joked about creating a restaurant with tamalizzas as the main dishes. After all, what better city than Laredo for that kind of dish to make its debut?

Unfortunately, we would never have the money or resources to do such a thing, so the tamalizza remained but a hopeful family's dream.

We never made it again after that year, since my grandma's physical and mental health rapidly deteriorated in the following years.

To this day, it's still one of my favorite memories with my grandmother.

But who knows? Perhaps one day, the world will be able to experience the unique creation known as

The Tamalizza!