It began with a call from a longtime friend, Sangamo Club general manager David Radwine. The Sangamo Club was hosting the 1995 Hope School Celebrity Chef Benefit. Rick Bayless, chef/owner of Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo was the celebrity chef, but the SC was responsible for the first course: did I have any ideas?

I immediately thought of fresh corn tamales, served with green mole sauce. They’d coordinate perfectly with Bayless’ menu that Radwine described. He asked if I’d assemble the tamales on the event day; I agreed.

After I’d hung up, it hit me – those tamales would be part of a Rick Bayless meal. They were good, but still….

Bayless is a culinary icon. In 1995 he hadn’t yet begun making PBS cooking shows, and his line of Frontera salsas and marinades (now available in most groceries) was on the drawing board. But through his restaurants and first cookbook, Authentic Mexican, he’d introduced Americans to sophisticated and nuanced Mexican cuisine few imagined.

Bayless grew up in his Oklahoma family’s barbeque restaurant with no thoughts of a cooking career. But a trip with his wife, Deann, to study Mexican anthropology, evolved into a lifelong, life-changing discovery of the anthropology of Mexican cooking.

Like most Americans, I enjoyed “Mexican” food – my mom’s tamale pie; taco kits with hardshell tacos, ground beef seasoning and canned salsa; nachos and fajitas. Taco Bell was tasty, too. But, tasty as it was, to most gringos, “Mexican” food was monochromatic.

Bayless showed us otherwise. What we’d thought of as Mexican was more Tex than Mex. I attended Bayless’ cooking seminars. We ate at Frontera (to our kids, a Chicago trip had to include Frontera), and Peter and I dined at upscale Topolobampo by ourselves. Alice Waters (“mother” of the local, seasonal, sustainable food movement) said her first priority whenever in Chicago was eating there. Bayless was named the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef of 1995, the chef equivalent of an Oscar for Best Actor/Actress.

Gulp! Arriving at the Sangamo Club on benefit day, I found the kitchen in full throttle. Bayless and his sous chef, Tracey Vowell, were working alongside SC chef Larry Langley and his staff. I’d seen Bayless countless times at Frontera, often with his daughter, Lanie, perched on his shoulder as he visited with diners. In the SC kitchen, he was equally easygoing, totally lacking the bombast and inflated ego of some celebrity chefs.

I had a separate workspace and an assistant. The cornhusks were presoaked, the masa mixture ready. The staff would clean up. “I could get used to this!” I thought.

Making 600 tamales for 300 guests took awhile. By late afternoon, the masa mixture was gone, but we were 24 tamales short. I glanced at the clock: there was barely enough time to get home, shower and change for the dinner. We quickly squeezed bits from already formed tamales, and got the job done.

Returning to the SC, I went into the kitchen – and stopped, frozen with embarrassment. Bayless and Vowell were frantically working, cleaning piles of tamales.

They’d exploded. I immediately knew why – and knew it was my fault. Masa expands as it steams, and it’s a cardinal rule not to wrap the cornhusks tightly around the filling – something I’d forgotten in my haste to make those last two dozen.

Bayless and Vowell had done a good job. On the plates, the tamales looked and tasted good. People I didn’t know – and didn’t know I’d made them – loved them. But I couldn’t enjoy their praise as much as