Santa Fe Christmas; This is raw footage for "A Southwest Christmas"

Bienvenidos a mi casa, welcome to my home. Today we're going to make one of the southwest's favorite Christmas treats called the Biscochito. First we'll get all our ingredients together. What Christmas cards are to the rest of America, Christmas foods are to New Mexico.

The gift of Christmas foods are meant to warm the soul to the season. The traditional foods of the southwestern Christmas differ from yet complement the other American foods of the holiday season, tamales, enchiladas, empanadas, and steaming bowls of Pasoli, a harmony stew, warm guests coming in from the cold of the high desert December evenings. The recipes for many of these New Mexican dishes have their roots in the native traditions of the Anasazi, recipes with corn, beans, and simple flatbread. Teas that have been handed down through the generations make up these lively feasts that are shared with neighbors, friends, and our highlights of the holiday season in New Mexico.

Bienvenido a mi casa, welcome to my home. Today we're going to make one of the southwest's favorite Christmas treats called the Biscochito. First we'll get all our ingredients together. We're going to need half a pound of lard. Now I know I can see the eyebrows go up. You don't have to use lard, you can use butter, margarine, and crisco. But the traditional Biscochitos were made with lard and they're much better. We use three quarter cup sugar, three teaspoons of anise seed. We need two eggs, very well beaten. We need three cups of lard, three to three and a half it varies. One and a half teaspoons of baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt, and half a cup of brandy.

But that's not a real must. Sometimes you don't need any liquid for your biscochitos. And if you don't have brandy, you can use wine. You also need a fourth of a cup of sugar and a tablespoon full of cinnamon. Maybe multiply that four or five times to coat the cookies in after they're taken out of the oven. This is what we'll need to make about five dozen cookies. Now I'm going to beat my eggs first because that way I don't have to wash the mixers again. So we'll beat the eggs stiffly. Then I go to the lard and three quarters cup sugar. And I'm going to beat that till it's nice and creamy and looks like thick cream. I'm going to add my eggs. All right, so we're ready for the flour.

We're going to mix that here in a separate bowl because I have other things I need to mix up in there. One, two, three, I'm going to leave half a cup out in case I need it to make sure the flour. All right, we need our nice seed that we're going to add here. And I'm going to put a nice, great, good tablespoon full in there. I like a lot of my niece. Now then, we have one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. That's good. And we add cinnamon to the flour to make it taste good. Now, tablespoon full. Put a little nutmeg.

I didn't use to put nutmeg in mine, but this lady from Mexico has told me that's what made a real difference. So now comes the gooey put. Get it in here. Mix it up. I never know how the dough is going to come out if I'm going to need to put liquid in it or more flour, but you can learn to do that after you make a few booboos once in a while way. It becomes second nature. And you'll be making these cookies time and time again, believe me. Okay, I'm going to put the rest of the flour in here and mix it up until it's super consistency that you'll be able to roll out your cookies. Mix them well. It's a lot of fun getting your hands in, don't pretend you're a kid again. That's just about the right consistency now. For me to be able to flour my cutting board and get my cookie cutters out now.

In the olden days, the floreau de lille was the traditional design for the biscochitos. Nowadays, you can do almost anything. I don't even like to make a gingerbread man out of them, but some people do. I divide my dough because you have to work it and work it. And it's easier to work it a little bit of the time. Like my rolling pin. That's a southwestern rolling pin. We use broom handles to make our rolling pins. They didn't believe me when I told them that. That's what we used to make them out of. See how nicely that rolls out? And you can gauge the thickness of it according to how thick you want your cookies. I like mine way for thin. Some people like them fat. These cookies should take about 15 to 18 minutes to bake. They don't get brown on top.

They get brown underneath and you check them. If they get brown on top, then they burn easily because they have so much sugar in them. Here we go. They're ready for the oven. There are many other southwestern Christmas favorites that can be shared by your friends and neighbors. I make an empanaditas, filled with minced meat and apple, the traditional food here in New Mexico for all the holidays, especially for Christmas and New Year's. Now I'm rolling it down. She's rolling out the dough and she's going to cut it. Then I'll take the dough and I'll fill it with apple. And you have to put the apple right in the middle so it doesn't come out of the corners

here and we'll pinch it with a fork. And I'm going to put the empanadita on the tray. What I'm going to do now is brush the tops of the empanaditas with being white so they'll get that golden brown once you bake them. We're going to bake them for 15 or 20 minutes depending on your oven. Once we get them all, brush with egg whites, then we're ready to put them in the oven. I'm taking out the empanaditas which have to bake for 20 to 25 minutes and they look delicious. They're very good. I'm making tamales and the mass is made of corn and it's mixed with our short meat and salt and water.

And then we make our tamale. Like this, we spread it on the corn husk, we put chile in the middle of it and put the meat, pork meat, and then wrap it around and the tamale is finished. My mom's through making her tamales. I have this deep pan behind us here that I'm going to bring forward, we're going to cook our tamales for 3 to 4 hours and we're going to stand them up until it's all full. I've already filled it up with water about a gallon and a half and then put it back on the stove and we're going to cover them and now the tamales are ready to eat. I'm going to make the sauce and these are the ingredients to make it.

First here's your corn, you have to watch it until it changes real clean, then you put it in your pot and then you put your meat in it in the pot and then you take the onion and put it there too. And then you put the oregano, garlic salt and salt and then you put some water in your pot and put it to cook, about 4 hours. Our parsley is ready, I put it in a big bowl. You can garnish it with red hot chili and it's ready to eat and now you can have a very crispy. Oh, lovely, look at that, now ready for the final product, they have to cool just a little

bit so that you don't bring your fingers coating them with the cinnamon and sugar. Okay, we're going to start sugaring them. I like to put three or four in a bowl at one time and that way it goes a little faster. Here we go, now comes the acid test, let's see, yes, be sure you make plenty because they're going to go fast. It's great.