Tamales for Christmas: The Flavor of Family  

Christmas is that special time of year when we gather with loved ones and create heartwarming memories. One of the highlights for every Belizean is the delicious food. For many, a traditional Belizean Christmas dinner means rice and beans, turkey, and ham, but that’s not the case for everyone. In tonight’s edition of Kolcha Tuesday, we traveled to San Jose Palmar in Orange Walk to explore the tradition of making and enjoying Christmas tamales. Here’s News Five’s Britney Gordon with the story.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

While many people are busy wrapping gifts in the weeks before Christmas, Isabel Chi is wrapping banana leaves. She’s making tamales, one of her family’s favorite holiday treats.

 

Isabel Chi, Tamales Maker

“For Christmas, right here at my home, we do a lot of cooking. Especially for the twenty-fourth night so that people come in, come here to visit you. We are ready for anybody, anybody who visit us. We have tamales, we have pibil, we have relleno, escabeche whatever. We have this traditional foods for entire people who come and visit us for that day and that day is, especially for our family, we get together on the twenty-fourth the night and then we get together and we have fun and have eating different kinds of stuff.”

 

For some Belizeans, Christmas isn’t complete without a hearty plate of rice and beans. But for Isabel, the holidays have a different flavor. In her backyard stands her beloved fire hearth, and that’s where the magic of her Christmas tamales happens.

 

Isabel Chi

“ It is not so much difficult because I get helping hands from my daughter- in-laws. I don’t have no daughter, but my in-laws, they help me a lot, my son, we come together and we prepare ourselves one day before. We cook together. Like the tamales, we get the leaves one day before, get it prepared, the chicken, and then in the early morning we get up and do the rest because sometimes we want to eat fresh tamales. We don’t want to eat the tamales one day before”

 

Isabel’s tamales are legendary, enjoyed by more than just her family. She also caters and her meals are sought after by people all over the country. The secret to her irresistible tamales lies in her homemade recado, a recipe passed down from her late mother, Juanita Caseres. She grows, dries, and grinds the seeds herself.

 

Isabel Chi

“I was taught that way by my mom. She said, never do tamales using foil because it won’t give you a nice taste. You will only use a little piece of leaf and it won’t give you the taste that you want of tamales because it’s the leaf that gives you the taste and your ingredients that they put on your chicken like your own ricardo that you do, like how I explained to you, I do my own ricardo and have it there save so that I can, when I want it, I can use it. Because it’s a lot of work to do, Ricardo. Every minute it’s a time. It’s two days that take you to make your own ricardo.”

 

Isabel is now passing these techniques down to the rest of her family.  Her daughter-in-law, Erica Balam, says that learning these techniques is a privilege she is forever grateful for.

 

Erica Balam, Isabel’s Daughter-in-law

“First when I was welcoming a family, I didn’t know a bit of cooking. I didn’t know how to cook rice, how to cook beans, but I want to say I’m so appreciative of miss Isabel Chi, who is my mother-in-law. I’ve learned a lot from her, and from her, along with her mother, Miss Juanita Caseres. Actually, it’s a great opportunity, and it’s a privilege for all of these traditions that we have been together as a family. And I’ve learned a lot when it comes to the cooking, .”

 

Chi explains that making tamales is a family affair. Her husband and sons gather banana leaves from the backyard, while her daughter-in-law and grandchildren help prepare the corn.

 

Isabel Chi

“From younger age, it we started to do it like this because together with my mom and my dad, they teach us this way to be like family reunion, be together. sons, granddaughters, grandsons, and whatever. So we get used to it and we continue our culture the same way continue it until God says I’m not here again and we will, they know how to handle theirself.”

 

These special moments allow Isabel to remain connected to her family. Now, she gets to recreate those cherished bonds she once had with her mother, with her loved ones.

 

Erica Balam

“We as her daughter-in-law’s we are part, we are like her daughter also because we help her in what we can, and at the same time, we learn, and that is what I learn a lot from her. It’s a great privilege for me to share all of these secret ingredients that she always makes, and and that is the which is the love, and the care, and how we do the food. And they say, Oh, it’s nice. So what do you put on it? And it’s just a love that how we do it.”

 

For those wanting to try Isabel’s Christmas tamales, she can be reached by cell at the number 6-6-9-6-2-1-9. Britney Gordon for News Five.