TOP TAMALE
Inaugural festival sets friendly competition in heart of Binghamton
On Saturday in Binghamton, about 10 men and women will take the title tamalero and lead their teams in a friendly competition to see whose recipe will be judged the best when it’s all over. It’s the first Centro Cultural Tamale Fest, an event that Centro Cultural and partners Caritas Village and Crosstown Arts hope to make a family-friendly annual party.
Event organizer Kristen FoxTrautman, a Centro Cultural board member, explains the difference between this festival and other, more serious competitions.
“They, the tamaleros, have agreed not only to share their recipes, but to teach people how to make their tamales,” she said. “People who have paid to be part of a team will help put them together; then, after they’re all made, they’ll take them outside to burners, steam them, and at the end have a friendly contest among the teams.”
Everyone except tamalero Karen Febles. Her team will bake its Mayan tamale in the oven.
“Traditionally we cook it in the ground,” she said. “We pretty much bury it, but we can adapt.” Eneydi Lopez cooks a wide variety of tamales including a vegetarian cheesy jalapeño tamale (left) and a spicy pork tamale cooked in a banana leaf, each filled with homemade chili sauce.
Febles is from the Yucatán Peninsula, and the recipe she’ll share with her team is one she prepared with her family every year on Hanal Pixan, which is the Mayan name for the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos in other areas of Mexico).
“It takes us about two days to make it,” she said. “This is why we only do it once a year.”
On Saturday, she’ll come prepared with masa that she’s already made, and her team will assemble the ingredients for the large tamale (tamal is the Spanish word, but the festival is using the American version) that will end up wrapped in banana leaves and baked in the oven; it will steam inside the leaves.
“Basically, we’ll make a little pot in the masa, and we fill it with meat — I’m going to use chicken — with the
achiote and broth, and a layer of onion and tomato. We top it off with a layer of masa and wrap it.
“So it’s my family recipe, but it’s adapted for here,” she said. “For example, I use purple hull peas in the masa.”
You don’t have to be on a team to enjoy the fun. Admission is $5 and includes two tickets for tamale samples. In addition, there’s live music ranging from a mariachi band to Mark Edgar Stuart, a children’s play area that will include a Spanish-speaking magician, art vendors and food trucks. A promotional screening of a tamale making documentary by Justin Thompson of Crosstown Arts is expected, too.
The festival is held at Caritas Village, a community center in the heart of Binghamton. It started in an old church in 2006 at Harvard and Yale with this mission: “To break down walls of hostility between the cultures, to build bridges of love and trust between the rich and those made poor and to provide a positive alternative to the street corners for the neighborhood children.”
“And I always follow that by saying that on a good day, it works,” said Onie Johns, the director of the center.
The heart of the center is the coffee shop, which serves sandwiches, pizzas, burgers, salads and so on, along with a homecooked meal, six days a week; the tamale preparation will take place in the dining room. Other services include child care, medical care one night a week, yoga classes, and an artist-in-residence program. Caritas also owns several homes in the neighborhood, and it’s pronounced like the Latin car-i-TAS, not the Spanish ca-REE-tas. “In Spanish, the word means ‘many faces,’” Johns said. “The Latin word means ‘love for all people.’”
Centro Cultural, a volunteer-run organization, opened offices four years ago at Caritas Village. Its goal is to promote awareness of cultural diversity through literary, performing and visual arts. Crosstown Arts is currently exhibiting “Stories on My Back,” a large-scale multimedia presentation largely constructed of tamale leaves by Richard Lou, chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Memphis. “This all came together in a completely organic way,” Fox-Trautman said. “We started talking, and this is what happened.”
Febles, a Centro Cultural volunteer, is excited.
“Crossing bridges through food and love, that’s my motto,” she said. “It doesn’t matter about the color of your skin or your country of origin. You just come together through things you love.”