- Slug: BC-CNS-Holiday Tamales,360
- Photos, video story available (thumbnails, captions below)
By GENESIS MONSERRATE
Cronkite News
PHOENIX – It’s Christmas Eve. There’s last-minute shopping to be done, wrapping, rushing from place to place and, for the workers at La Purisima Bakery, cooking. Lots and lots of cooking.
Workers at the family-owned Glendale bakery make thousands of tamales in a typical a week, but can barely keep up with holiday orders in December. On a typical Christmas Eve, the shop may make 500 dozen tamales – that’s 6,000 tamales, close to twice what the bakery will sell in a normal week.
That’s just fine with Arellano family, which owns the bakery and has seen the appeal of tamales spread.
La Purisima has been in business for 32 years and has become a popular place to buy fresh-made tortillas, pastries, selling 300 to 400 dozen tamales in a regular week, according to owner Maricela Arellano.
The food is true to its traditional Mexican roots: Tamales are made of a corn meal mix or “masa” that is wrapped in a cornhusk then stuffed with a variety of fillings and steamed.
At La Purisima, tamale maker Iris Arellano said they are “dedicated to making only four types of tamales: red and green chile with pork, chile with fresh corn and cheese, and sweet tamales with raisins and coconut.”
“Many of our American clients love the red chile and pork,” Iris Arellano said.
But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some changes, as tamales have become a holiday favorite across the Southwest. Maricela Arellano laughs that some families make turkey tamales for the holidays.
While gourmet fillings are available at some shops, most customers at La Purisima go for the traditional varieties. But the bakery is not above tinkering. Maricela Arellano said she is thinking about vegan tamales, for example.
These days, many families leave the actual tamale-making to others, ordering them from bakeries like La Purisima by the dozen. People line up to order their favorite variety at restaurants and bakeries throughout Arizona. Which puts new meaning in the term holiday rush for people like Iris Arellano.
“It gives us a lot of satisfaction to make tamales,” she said, “and we make a lot of them.”
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Workers at La Purisima Bakery make about 300 to 400 dozen tamales, and the orders double during the Christmas season. (Photo by Genesis Monserrate/Cronkite News)
Gourmet fillings and vegan tamales are available at some shops but most customers at La Purisima prefer the traditional variety. (Photo by Genesis Monserrate/Cronkite News