[dropcap size=big]I[/dropcap]t was the week before Thanksgiving and Norma Pérez stood inside L.A. Wholesale Produce Market at three in the morning, searching for the freshest bags of plantain leaves.
She had received 500 orders for vegan tamales, the Salvadoran kind with the savory custard-like masa stuffed with “meat,” red bell peppers, chickpeas and potatoes, and wrapped in a cooked leaf. The sun had not yet risen as she checked out with seven bags of the raw leaves, twenty-eight pounds of them.
Later in the day, she would take out the leaves, cut the long sheets into smaller rectangles, stack them onto a pile on her dining table, and then, one by one, carefully wipe them down and tear out the veins. She would would watch their color and texture transform as she cooked each individual leaf directly over low heat. And she would repeat this process 500 times with the concentration of an artist.
If you know anything about making Salvadoran tamales, you know that this is only step one of a long and arduous pursuit. Every six hours that Norma poured into her work, she produced a batch of 80-something steaming hot tamales. She finished up all the orders in five days, just in time for Thanksgiving.