Mexican tamale’s are wrapped in dried corn husks and are drier. South American tamale’s - like from Colombia and Nicaragua - are wrapped in banana leaves and are moister. Then, in Western Europe, polenta is like an example of the extreme wet side of the spectrum. (Its also interesting to note here that the wetter tamale’s were a new developement after colonialism hit latin america.) Noticing how tamales get drier as you move up the America’s the, I looked to the US. We don’t really have a tamale here - I dont even know if our natives really had corn (it originated in Mexico) - but we do have cornbread. Cornbread could be seen as the polar opposite of polenta, i.e., the dry end. It’s light and airy, while polenta is dense and wet. Desperately trying to find a link to tamale’s, the thought of the classic pairing of cornbread and chili came to me, and I realized that the rather commonplace cornbread and chili could actually be heralded as a brilliant deconstruction of the ancient tamale.
