Time for Tamales
"In Mexico, everyone has made tamales at least once,” says Nadia Toledo Perez, owner of Antojos y Sabores. With hundreds of variations, consisting of a corn dough with meat, cheese or sweet fruit fillings, tamales are wrapped in a corn husk or banana leaf before being steamed and eaten warm. It’s the kind of thing that families gather together to make, partly because of how labour intensive they are and also because of when they are eaten. Tamales are an integral part of Mesoamerican culture and feature in many celebrations, from weddings, to Christmas and New Year’s.
At this time of year, many Mexicans celebrate Día de los Reyes or Three Kings’ Day with a Rosca de Reyes, a yeasty, fruity bread in which a small figure of the baby Jesus hides. Whoever receives this figure in their piece of the fruit bread must buy the tamales for Candlemas or Fiesta de la Candelaria, which occurs on February 2.
And while Vancouver enjoys a wealth of Mexican food, back in 2020, it was still difficult to find tamales in Vancouver.
Antojos y Sabores translates to “cravings and flavours,” which makes sense given the story of how this company was created. Toledo Perez was working as a conference and event manager in 2020 and soon found herself unemployed as the global pandemic shut down conferences and events in Vancouver and worldwide. Her parents encouraged her to do something involving cooking and what began as a family response to the pandemic soon morphed into a thriving business.
“We couldn’t find tamales at the time,” Toledo Perez says. “We were missing that traditional taste, those flavours that bring you back. Nobody makes tamales [and] here’s a reason why. It’s very demanding.”
Despite this, they decided to give it a go, understanding that there might not be demand and also understanding that it was a lot of work to make them.
Operating out of a commissary kitchen in Kitsilano, the family began offering a daily rotating meal of various Mexican dishes, featuring tamales and pozole, the latter a stew made with hominy (nixtamalized maize), on the weekend.
“We were working seven days a week and we were exhausted,” Toledo Perez says.
Realizing this was not sustainable, and seeing that the demand for tamales was outstripping the other items, the family members realized they needed to streamline their business and began to focus solely on tamales.
“It was a lot of work, but we saw that people were buying them,” Toledo Perez explains.
The labour in making tamales by hand is indeed intensive. From making the masa and the various fillings and fresh salsas to selecting the corn husks and softening them in water to make them pliable involves a long to-do list. When that’s completed, Toledo Perez and her mother, Estefania Perez Dominguez, spend a full two days assembling the tamales, wrapping and tying each one by hand in a practised and rhythmic fashion that often involves a bit of music in the background.
According to Toledo Perez, the key to superior tamales is in the masa or dough. “I think the secret is in the masa — it has to be moist and full of flavour to complement the filling.”
But the women behind Antojos y Sabores have also put lots of thought into their numerous fillings. There’s pork in red sauce and salsa verde made from fresh tomatillos, which are also used in the chicken tamales. The mother and daughter experimented with their traditional recipes to develop some that are still true to tradition but incorporate various dietary needs.
It was important for the company to be able to offer vegan flavours made with fresh ingredients, so they developed: mushroom tinga, a mixture of oyster and enoki mushrooms in tomato and chipotle sauce, as well as tamal poblano, a mixture of poblano peppers, mushroom, corn and salsa verde.
“I think the most important for me is to be loyal to the flavours and the way of doing it,” Toledo Perez says, adding, “I like to stick to the traditional way of showing people how we eat them.” Case in point: although delicious, tamales are not traditionally served with adornments such as salsa, beans or sour cream. Sauces, if used, are inside the tamale.
From its commissary location in East Vancouver, Antojos y Sabores offers ready-to-eat tamales available for pickup and delivery. It is also increasingly focusing on retail products, which are supplied frozen and vacuum packed, so they can be easily reheated at home.
Toledo Perez is grateful for all the support she’s received. “I am very thankful that people are accepting my product,” she says. “They are not only accepting my product but they are accepting my culture, my heritage. Canada is a melting pot and we can all contribute.”
Antojos y Sabores
Order for pickup at Coho Commissary in East Vancouver
1370 E. Georgia St., Vancouver, B.C.
antojosysabores.com | 778.885.5125 | @antojosysaboresca
Find it frozen at: Fresh Street Market, Gourmet Warehouse, IGA, Meridian Farm Market, Spud.com
