Tamales con Rajas

Consider the strangeness of the Mexican diet before the Cortés landfall in 1519. Meals were almost exclusively vegetarian. There were none of the domestic animals usual in Old World agriculture: no cattle, no horses, no sheep, no goats. As a consequence, Mexicans cooked without animal fat or dairy products. The cheese so omnipresent in Mexican food of today was unknown. No wonder the Aztecs ate worms and grasshoppers and pond slime. The wonder is that they evolved the dishes that became the