A trip to Mercado de la Merced, and the search for a tamalera

I’d been dragging my feet on buying a tamale steamer pot, called a tamalera, for weeks. It’s a big, bulky steel thing, bigger (I imagined) than a stock pot. I wasn’t entirely sure where to buy it. Or whether I’d be able to carry it home.

Part of me also feared the whole buying process, because I had no idea what I was doing. How do you say “four-chambered steamer” in Spanish? What did a tamale steamer even look like up-close? What if some random vendor knew I was a foreigner, and decided to rip me off?

I knew Mercado de la Merced had tamaleras. But it was too far, and too crowded. I didn’t want to go.

Last Thursday, I asked Lola if she had any leads.

“No, it’s best to go to Merced,” she said. “It’s not far. There’s a pesero that goes straight there, and it’s just a block away from here.”

“There is?”

“Yes. Are you going by yourself?”

I said yes.

“You don’t have an amiguita who can go with you?”

No.

“Well… make sure you take your grocery bag for your groceries, and wear your purse in front of you, not behind you, and don’t put your money in your back pockets.”

On Monday, the last day I could buy my pot and still have enough time to make a practice batch of tamales before Sunday’s tamalada, I took a cab to Merced, intending to buy the tamalera, masa and lard. I was going to take a pesero, but I was in a hurry. Had to be back in 90 minutes for an appointment in Polanco.

The cab dropped me off two blocks away. The market was too crowded and crazy to try to get any closer. A nest of tarps and puestos smothered the sidewalks, offering purses, clothes, socks, T-shirts, tacos and Christmas decorations. Just beyond that, the kitchen-appliance vendors had set up rows of steel grills, two-handled steel ollas and metal juicers.

The market building had nearly been swallowed up by the street vendors, but I finally spotted it and went inside. (Goal: masa and lard first, tamalera last.) The scope of everything floored me: cornhusks stacked to the ceiling, buckets brimming with thick mole pastes. At several booths, vendors sat in fold-out chairs and shucked corn. Fresh green corn leaves piled at their feet.

I found my tamale flour…

And the lard, in a plastic bucket.

Then I decided to buy some bacalao (salt cod), even though I had no idea how to prepare it. But it looked way too intriguing to pass up. I asked the vendor if she knew how to make it and she said, “Claro que sí reinita,” and then proceeded to tell me in detailed steps. I wrote everything down in my moleskine.

Finally, I left the building and meandered over to the kitchen-appliances section, where I immediately saw the tamale steamers. They were piled next to fry baskets, strainers, wooden buckets to make ice cream.

“Qué le damos señorita? Qué buscas?” a thin, mustached man asked me.

I told him and he asked me what size.

Size?

Crap… uh….

I pointed to a medium-sized pot.

He told me it was 280 pesos, which seemed like way too much. I said thanks and decided to move on.

“Okay, 260,” he said. And as I started to walk away: “250… okay, 230, but that’s as far as I’ll go…”

I kept walking to the next booth, where I found a nice, quiet vendor who asked me what I was looking for. I told him — “una tamalera… este… de tres partes?” — and he showed me a clean, shiny pot with a three-chambered insert. He explained the difference between the aluminum pots and the steel ones (the steel aren’t supposed to rust).

The lowest he’d go was 250, but that was fine with me. I paid him, and bought a tortilla press too.

“Shall I put it in a bag?” he asked.

A bag? Did my tamalera fit in there? This seemed way easier than I’d hyped it up to be.

Sure enough, my new tamalera fit snugly in a black plastic bag, with the tortilla press wedged inside the pot. I carried it away from his stand, and out the door. Back to its new home.

It still smells faintly of corn from the tamales I made a few days ago.