Mas masa: San Jose’s Tamale Factory revs up for holiday tamaladas

Claudia López has come a long way from the days of corn husk duty.

When she was a little girl growing up in Durango, Mexico, her family hosted tamaladas — festive, tamale-making parties reserved for special occasions, especially Christmas. López was in charge of separating and drying the soaked corn husks, so that her mother and abuelita could press masa dough and fillings into them, before wrapping and steaming them into tamales.

These days, López is running the show. She is the owner of The Tamale Factory, a San Jose business that has been in her family for 25 years. And the lead up to Christmas dinner, when thousands of Bay Area families will eat tamales or buy masa dough to make their own, is the busiest time of year. Last year’s 27,000 weren’t enough. López’s goal this year is 30,000 tamales.

“It’s so fun spending time together making the tamales,” says López, whose small crew has been working in shifts around the clock to fill orders for pork in red salsa, chicken chile verde, jalapeño and cheese, and sweet, pineapple-laced tamales. “It’s a total family thing.”

This particular group, which ranges in age from 19 to 62, has worked together every holiday season for years. The process starts with 50 pounds of finely-ground corn flour to which they add 15 to 20 pounds of lard and three large buckets of hot water. It’s all mixed by hand, believe it or not, until a soft dough is formed.

You can use oil instead of lard, Lopez says. Just be generous, or your dough will be dry. The technique for spreading the masa into corn husks or banana leaves is a personal one. Lopez uses the back of a spoon while others use their fingers or even a tortilla press. When the tamales have been wrapped and are ready to steam, she says, cook them longer than you think is necessary to ensure a moist tamale. At The Tamale Factory, they steam their tamales for two hours.

Fillings and flavors vary widely by family and region. Sinaloans, from the Pacific coast, often fill tamales with shrimp. In Oaxaca, the region’s mole negro and other saucy meats, like pork in chile sauce, fill large tamales. Sweet tamales have become popular on the streets of Mexico City, where famed chef-restaurateur Gabriella Camara makes a gourmet version with manchego and quince paste.

And in López’s home-state of Durango, tamales typically contain a variety of meat and vegetables and are made very thin, especially when compared to the dense logs found in frozen food aisles.

“It’s 75 percent filling for us,” López says.

Even at home, tamales are labor intensive. After the masa and fillings have been made, the work of wrapping each one goes faster with additional hands. It’s sociable, too. Tamale-building is a meditation in slowing down, telling stories and catching up with family over sangria or chocolaty champurrado. That’s how Lopez, who was born in San Jose but raised in Mexico until age 14, remembers it. Tamaladas were multi-day affairs.

On day one, Lopez’s uncle Jesus would kill the pig and make the pozole. Her abuelita, Tomasita, and mom, Teresa, were in charge of prepping the meat, chiles and sauces. The next day, they would make the masa, which was seasoned with lard from the pork instead of salt. And the morning of the tamalada was reserved for making beans or other side dishes to eat with the tamales.

When they came to the U.S. in 1990, Lopez’s mom began selling the tamales at her kids’ schools. By then, Lopez had graduated from husk duty and was responsible for babysitting the younger kids on tamale-making days. It was Lopez’s older sister, Lucy, who made the family business official in 1995 and finally taught Lopez how to make a proper tamale.

“One day she said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at 6 a.m., and I’ll teach you how to spread the masa,” Lopez says. “Three days after she trained me, she left me there.” Complications from diabetes caused Lucy to retire early, and put Claudia in charge of the business in 1997. She was 21.

These days, like many of her customers, Lopez is too busy to host a proper tamalada of her own. But, she says, you don’t need to spend days preparing. Buy your masa dough. Anything can be a filling. Beans and cheese, even peanut butter and jelly (she adds a bit of fresh fruit, too). Or, shred a Costco rotisserie chicken, add a can of Las Palmas green chile sauce and some chopped jalapenos and you’re done, López says.

Better yet, do it together. Last year, when a father showed up at the San Jose shop just days before Christmas, wanting to make tamales with his daughters for the first time, Lopez scrounged to find some masa to sell him. She even gave him the corn husks for free.