POP-UP TAMALES
Purveyor Railyard offers at unique style once a week
Everyone in Santa Fe has their tamale source. Some go with the tried-and-true purveyors like Posa’s or El Parasol; others have friends who make them at home; still others have abuelitas who enlist them in tamale production lines. Peak tamale-consumption season is at Christmas, but this year, well before the tinsel goes up, Santa Fe’s tamale-lovers have been quietly discovering Little Flower Foods, a pop-up at the Sunday Artisan Market at the Santa Fe Farmers Market helmed by one-woman tamale powerhouse Loretta Thomas.
Little Flower Foods blossomed at the beginning of this year, but Thomas is already establishing herself firmly in the Artisan Market’s burgeoning clean-eating food scene (across from gluten-free, vegan baking team Drift & Porter). Thomas’ tamales are markedly different from the ones you’re likely to run into at your typical holiday party.
Tamales, for the uninitiated, are originally a Central American/Mexican food, a kind of steamed dumpling wrapped tightly in a corn husk (or a banana leaf, in some places) comprised of a corn dough outer layer (the masa) and fillings of meat, vegetables, chiles, etc. The ultimate make-ahead, portable finger food, tamales are popular at parties and events, but are such a flexible foil for culinary creativity that they show up on fine-dining menus in myriad permutations as well.
“Tamales have become a New Mexican soul food,” Thomas says. “Construction workers can take them out of their home to eat. It’s like a hot dog wrapped in its own casing. … This is something we did at holiday times. We had a family of 17, and we were set up for tamales, doing the tamale line.”
And tamales truly did feed Thomas’ soul, particularly during the hardest time of her life. Prior to turning tamale queen, Thomas worked in the medical field as a nurse’s aide, a technician and a trauma secretary for Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, but she was always an enthusiastic cook.
“Medical was my profession; culinary was my passion,” she says. But in 2014, complications from surgery left Thomas with sepsis, which almost killed her.
“I spent a year fighting for my life, with 45 days on life support,” she says. “I really shouldn’t even be here today.”
After Thomas recovered, she was left with compromised health and digestive issues. She’d been on a feeding tube for a year, unable to eat or taste. As those feelings returned, however, they were intensified. Her hyperattuned palate made her hypersensitive to fillers, thickeners and offtastes, so she took the recipes down to scratch and rebuilt them using, as she puts it, “clean” ingredients. For example, she has replaced pinto beans in her cooking with white beans, which she describes as having a “cleaner,” less gritty, less earthy taste that allows the flavors of the blue corn and other ingredients to shine through, as well as making the tamales healthier overall.
“[White beans] cook a lot easier and the liquid thickens a lot faster, so I am able to create a refried without actually refrying it,” she says. The masa itself is made with whipped vegetable shortening instead of lard, so the only animal products are in the fillings themselves, making several of her tamale flavors vegetarian or vegan as well as glutenfree. The tamales come in traditional combinations like red chile with pork, red chile with chicken and green chile with chicken and cheese (although Thomas has done special orders of green chile with pork, so go ahead and ask), as well as vegetarian calabacitas (for which she uses three kinds of squash) with green chile and cheese, or with red chile and no cheese. The calabacitas are cooked like carne adovada, allowing the squash to slowly and thoroughly absorb the spicy cooking liquid. She also makes a chalupalike, creamy tamale with white beans and chile and/or cheese.
Thomas’ tamales are labor-intensive (since she makes every single one by hand) and traditional, wrapped and tied at each end (you’ll often find commercially available tamales open at one end, which creates a different texture) and then steamed in that quasi-sealed corn husk to create a tender, soft interior.
As to the distinctive masa, Thomas’ use of blue corn is deeply personal.
“My mother was raised near San Ildefonso Pueblo, and I know the Natives were using the corn regularly,” she says. “You could actually find blue corn everywhere, people were cooking it. My grandmother made biscuits with it. She also made something called atole, which was like a cream of wheat base like grits, some flavored sweet, some salty. And we grew up on that.”
For Thomas, a Santa Fe native, blue corn itself is a comfort food that ties her to her roots.
“My grandmother used to cook with blue corn, and they lived off the land and had their own livestock and gardens, off Canyon Road on Apodaca hill on the east side,” she says. “When my grandmother died and after my parents divorced, I really went on the search for blue corn. I found it became scarce, and I was looking for something to bring back the comfort of my grandparents.”
Most people in New Mexico who think they’ve had real blue corn probably haven’t. According to Thomas, much of the state’s favorite non-chile flagship food is a bit, well, less than true blue.
“I found blue corn that was dyed, blue corn that had preservatives; I found all the colors, purple, dark blue, and it wasn’t until really after I woke up from my year battle that the resources became available,” she says. “These are questions we’ve stopped asking: In your chips, how much blue corn is there really? Is it real blue corn or is it dyed? Really blue corn has an asphalt gray color.”
The blue and white corn in Thomas’ tamales is 100 percent organic, from a single farm, and arrives not as a powder but still wet, in bags that evoke yet another memory for Thomas.
“As a child, we grew up making adobe bricks. The houses were being built out of adobe,” she says. “When I receive this blue corn, part of my enjoyment of playing with it is it comes like adobe mud.”
If you want more than a few tamales, call ahead to preorder — at this point, Thomas is asking for a week’s notice if possible. If you want to try them, you can order them hot directly from the stand at the Artisan Market for $5 each. A dozen will run you $36. You can get your tamales cooked and frozen or cooked unfrozen (state regulations require that they be sold cooked). And Little Flower soon will be cropping up at events, like Panza Llena, Corazón Contento: New Mexico Food and Beer Festival at El Rancho de las Golondrinas on Aug 4-5.
“The real test on a tamale when they’re cooked and frozen is when you go to reheat them,” Thomas says. “That’s where they lose a lot of the moisture and so forth. I’ve discovered that mine, even in a microwave, are fresh.” Thomas suggests either microwaving or steaming to reheat — an oven will just dry them out.
For Thomas, making tamales became a welcome distraction between doctor’s appointments and stints in the hospital. Now, they’re a big part of her raison d’être.
“I started this because knowing that my health was compromised, I wanted to leave something behind,” she says. “I believe in the products, and I believe in my grandmother continuing to live through me. This is my bucket list. When you reach my age, and with the health issues that I have, I need a reason to fight. This is something that I believe in with my whole heart. I hope I’m an inspiration to women with disabilities to show that with passion and inspiration, there’s no limitations.”
For now, Little Flower Foods only serves tamales, but Thomas has plans for additional offerings, like Frito pies cooked with these same principles, with pork, chicken, and tofu as options; stews; and beyond. And while everything Little Flower serves is made by her own two delicate hands, Thomas hopes to eventually bring others along for the ride.
“I’ve got children and grandchildren. Hopefully one of them will get inspired to continue it. … I want to see Little Flowers sprouted all over the desert,” Thomas says. “I want to bring a garden to New Mexico.”