re: Delta Tamales

From the SFA primer: "Tamales from the Mississippi Delta are smaller than Latin-style tamales, are simmered instead of steamed, have a gritty texture from the use of corn meal instead of corn flour, have considerably more spice, and are usually served with juice that is the byproduct of simmering."

The ones I had at Fat Mama's, years ago, were not Delta style. They were like you'd typically find in LA or Texas. The ones from The Donut Shop in Natchez definitely were Delta. Small, spicy, juicy from the broth. Delicious.

Within the Delta, the city of Greenville is a hotbed of hot tamales. In the early part of the twentieth century, river commerce drew many Sicilians to the area. It’s possible that migrant Mexican laborers who came through the Delta might have shared their tamale tradition with these Italian immigrants. Delta tamales may have developed from the African American dish called cush. Lumumba Ajanaku, a tamale vendor in Yazoo City, talks about cush in his interview: “Some say [hot tamales] come from an old word that we use called cush, you know. A lot of the Africans would just take meal and season the meal…because a lot of them didn’t have enough money to buy meat like they wanted, so they would take the meal and season the meal. And the meal would taste so good it tasted like meat was in it.”
--from that article.

Maybe the dish known as cush cush came from this in some way? My grandmother made cush cush, much to my enjoyment.

ETA: I appreciate the education on tamales here. There once was an old man who came through my hometown selling the juicy seasoned tamales, probably the "delta style" when I was a kid and that was all that I knew for a long time. I've since ordered tamales at restaurants now mostly disappointed, never getting that same quality as I had once known.