Merry Christmas!
In recent years, I’ve adopted a new holiday food tradition: tamales. I’ve gotten pretty good at the recipe – made with slow-cooked pork wrapped in masa dough and steamed in corn husks – thanks to the guidance of my fiance’s Mexican-American family. (For example, the dough, his mother taught me, is ready only when it floats in water.)
And tamales are an enormous effort – an all-day event. But I suppose that’s the point, right? When it comes to our Christmas spreads, memories are so often made in the kitchen. The feast itself, well, that’s just icing on the cake – or, the homemade salsa on the tamale, as it were.
In our first story below, three local chefs share the traditions (and recipes) that help make their Christmas Day so special.
– Sunny Montgomery, editor