A Quick Dinner For A Stress-Free Christmas Eve

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Cooking a fast, healthy, and pleasing dinner for the family during the holidays can be a challenge, and Christmas Eve is no exception. Like the other nights in December, there is a good chance that dinner is competing with holiday parties, Nutcracker performances, and last minute shopping trips. Christmas Eve gets the added complications of church, early present opening, and perhaps conflicting family celebrations. As daunting as it may seem, sitting down for a proper dinner, even if it is a quick one, is one way to keep the kids from a candy cane induced sugar rush and keep parents from holiday stress breakdown.

The challenge of all these competing interests on Christmas Eve is probably why my parents opted to outsource most of our dinner over the years. Tamales are a traditional Christmas Eve food in parts of the world such as Southern California, where there are large Hispanic and Native American populations. And lucky for my parents, there is always someone nearby who makes tamales better than us so outsourcing the tamales is a natural option. There was the year where my mother and I made tamales ourselves, but, after three hours of stuffing masa and stewed chicken into corn husks and the hour-plus it took to fully steam the batch, we decided that although a fun exercise, it wasn’t fun enough to keep doing it ourselves year after year.

So each year the family sits down for tamales, made by someone else, with sides made by us. When thinking enough in advance, my mother will buy tamales from a former co-worker whose family has been making tamales by hand for generations. There was the year where openly talking about our search for tamales led to a parking lot deal with the man behind the butcher counter who had overheard our conversation; turns out his family too has a multi-generational tamale business around the holidays. And then there was the year of desperation: no forward thinking led to picking up an order of husk-less tamales smothered in sauce from a local Mexican restaurant. But every year, no matter where the tamales are sourced, my mother makes honeyed carrots, we serve some sort of green vegetable, and we sit down, however briefly, as a family for a civilized dinner in the midst of the holiday chaos.

Unless you live in a part of the country with a lot of tamale makers, it is unlikely you can partly outsource dinner in the way that my family does. The good news is that part of what makes tamales so popular around my house, the delicious combination of creamy cornmeal masa with savory meat fillings or sweet dessert filling, can be easily had at home, if not in form then in taste.

The abundance of home recipe cards for “tamale pie” is evidence that I am not the only one with this idea. Although a delicious substitute for classically formed tamales, the one downfall of tamale pie is you are limited to the one filling that is put in the cornmeal center. Part of the fun of traditional tamales is the ability to choose between different savory fillings such as chicken or pork, with perhaps a sweet brown sugar and cinnamon tamale to finish.

This led me to thinking about how to get that cornmeal/masa taste with the ability to serve different fillings. Maybe instead of a filling, it is a topping? A corn cake, sort of a dense pancake made of cornmeal, would give a similar texture and taste as the masa and be a good base for a variety of sweet and savory toppings. If the batter were divided in two, half of the batter could be given a savory kick with shredded cheddar cheese and canned green chilies. The other half could be designated “sweet” with some molasses and a bit of brown sugar. Savory topping could vary widely but I’m thinking chopped chicken with tomatillos and jalapenos or maybe ground beef with pinto beans. The sweet corn cakes will already be pretty sweet so will need little more than a dollop of cinnamon and sugar infused butter to melt over still warm cakes, fresh off the griddle.

What I like about tamales for Christmas is their low maintenance, crowd pleasing ability to get everyone around the table if even for a few minutes. With corn cakes and toppings, you get those same tamale flavors with the variety that will keep the interest of kid and grown up alike. Although the parties and presents are great, if the holidays are really about the family, any dish that will get everyone to sit down for a few minutes before rushing off to the next activity is a tradition worth keeping.

Serves/Makes: 6

• 3/4 cup medium grind cornmeal
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 can (4 ounce size) diced green chilies
• 2 ounces grated Cheddar cheese
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted (plus extra)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 medium onion
• 1/2 pound lean ground beef
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 can (15 ounce size) pinto beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 Roma tomatoes, diced
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• salt and pepper