LET’S CHAT ABOUT IT
I’m a YouTube gal. This isn’t news on this blog. We already know I love Bon Appetit, we know I lose sleep spending hours watching birria videos, we know I’m dedicated to multiple Eater series. So when Claudia Regalado’s tamales video came up on my Recommended one day, I clicked in a split second.
I have talked extensively about how important cooking and family recipes are to me — growing up in an Italian family, we eat a home cooked dinner together every night and my mom’s cooking is something that has genuinely had an impact on who I am. Claudia’s videos give me the same vibe that seeing my own mom cook at home does.
In the tamales video above, Claudia invites her daughter on camera to help fill the cornhusks and her mother can be heard off camera also assisting. She says to her audience, “this is great to do with your little girls.” And before someone suggests that it’s damaging or anti-feminist to push cooking on girls from a young age, I would argue that keeping traditions like those alive amongst women is actually incredibly important. No, women don’t need to be the cooks, they don’t belong in the kitchen — but why not have a glass of wine gossiping with the ladies while making something like tamales?
Or, in my case, manicotti.
The way Claudia’s daughter helps with the tamales — incorrectly, which is adorable — reminds me so much of helping my mom make manicottis for Christmas every year growing up with my sister. We would always be on macaroni duty while my mom filled, and I can’t count how many times we would make the pasta way too thick or uneven or misshapen. Just like the way Claudia gets slightly frustrated with her daughter’s mistakes and takes over for her, my mom would dismiss us after we wasted a little too much messing up.
In addition to the sentimentality and nostalgia that her videos give me, I’m also able to learn a lot about what actually goes into Mexican food. Tamales aren’t that different from manicotti, mole and consome and pozole aren’t that different from gravy. So, I figure, if I can make their Italian counterparts, I can probably make these Mexican dishes too!
Shoutout to Claudia Regalado and her bomb YouTube channel for being the true inspiration behind my quarantine cooking.
I suggest binging all of her videos immediately — start with tamales, conchas, or mole enchiladas… but make sure you’ve got a snack nearby because you’re bound to get hungry.
We Stan Tacos 