• « A call to Action | Home | Laporte saves the day »

    Tamales, Wontons and Cookies

    By jorsillo | December 28, 2008

    Christmas Eve 2008, originally uploaded by Joseph Orsillo.

    This Christmas was especially pleasant. It started off a little daunting with the news that both sides of my family were celebrating on Christmas Eve. In years past these were usually split between the Eve and the Day, but not this year. That meant all of the cooking and wrapping had to be done especially early. Luckily, my world famous chocolate chip cookies were baked the night before, although one batch was ruined due to spoiled nuts. If it were not for my selflessly making nut less cookies for the niece, the whole lot would have been toast. That still meant cream cheese wontons and green chile tamales had to be dealt before we left the house at 1:30 in the afternoon. I had made the wontons earlier that week so I was not so concerned with them turning out well, just the time involved with their preparation. The tamales on the other hand, were a venture into uncharted territory. I had found the recipe for the very tasty green chile tamale served at El Chollo in Pasadena. Michelle and I had them a few years ago but have not been back since. The recipe seemed easy enough, but I was dealing with all kinds of conversion issues; pounds to cups, whole ears of corn to cups of canned corn. Then we had to deal with the whole business of wrapping them up in corn husks and parchment paper. I think Michelle had seen her mom and sister do this before, but it really was a new experience for both of us. All in all, everything was done on time and tasted quite good. The wontons were a big hit at the in-laws’ and the tamales were a smash at my sister’s (a first for my Argentine/Italian family). All in all it turned out to be a very nice Christmas Eve, and the best part was Michelle and I got to spend Christmas day alone together at home.

    You can see a slide show of the whole evening here, but beware, I was very snap happy that night…

    Update: Sorry if anyone clicked on a link in this post and got redirected to something malicious. I’m not sure whats up with that, but I know there’s been something screwie with my site for a while now. If anyone is still interested in seeing the Christmas Eve shots I would suggest you copy the address below and paste it into your browser…

    http://orsillophoto.com/Christmas2008

    Topics: Uncategorized |

    Comments

    You must be logged in to post a comment.