Taco USA (An Amusing History of Mexican Food in the United States)

Reason ^ | June 2012 | Gustavo "Ask a Mexican" Arellano

[mojito]

....There is nothing remotely Mexican about Potato Olés—not even the quasi-Spanish name, which has a distinctly Castilian accent. The burrito was more insulting to me and my heritage than casting Charlton Heston as the swarthy Mexican hero in Touch of Evil. But it was intriguing enough to take back to my hotel room for a taste. There, as I experienced all of the concoction’s gooey, filling glory while chilly rain fell outside, it struck me: Mexican food has become a better culinary metaphor for America than the melting pot.

Back home, my friends did not believe that a tater tot burrito could exist. When I showed them proof online, out came jeremiads about inauthenticity, about how I was a traitor for patronizing a Mexican chain that got its start in Wyoming, about how the avaricious gabachos had once again usurped our holy cuisine and corrupted it to fit their crude palates.

In defending that tortilla-swaddled abomination, I unknowingly joined a long, proud lineage of food heretics and lawbreakers who have been developing, adapting, and popularizing Mexican food in El Norte since before the Civil War. Tortillas and tamales have long left behind the moorings of immigrant culture and fully infiltrated every level of the American food pyramid, from state dinners at the White House to your local 7-Eleven. Decades’ worth of attempted restrictions by governments, academics, and other self-appointed custodians of purity have only made the strain stronger and more resilient. The result is a market-driven mongrel cuisine every bit as delicious and all-American as the German classics we appropriated from Frankfurt and Hamburg.

[RegulatorCountry]

Fieldcress is so common in most of the south that it’s regarded as a wild green, it’s everywhere. Pretty good too, if you enjoy a more pungent variety of greens. Locals know them only as creasy greens, whether that’s a corruption of cress or named for the appearance of the leaves, I couldn’t say.

[txhurl]

I get the feeling that done right it could be pretty good, and done wrong it could call for a Nuremberg Trial.

---

You know, 20 years later, after having witnessed it, I admit the dish may have its applications. If you have sub-zero weather and a horde of teenage boys, it kinda makes sense, like a shepherd’s pie done up big.

What’s shocking - and liberating for some, I suppose - is you aren’t cooking, just dumping frozen and canned ingredients and baking.

I think I might try this at the next family get-together, if only for the shock value.

[Fast Moving Angel]

Growing up in LA, you probably knew about El Coyote. Good food, but the best green corn tamales I’ve ever had!! :-d)

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Gringos seem to think that you slather salsa of some kind or another on EVERYTHING.

The only reason I eat burritos is because it is too messy to eat salsa out of my bare hands. A burrito is nothing but a foundation material for eating salsa. I bury my burritos in salsa, and I laugh.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Oh, and chili con carne sucks. Real chili doesn’t have beans!

[RegulatorCountry]

I suspect they weren’t deliberately set loose on the barrier islands from Assateague and Chincoteague on down to Ocracoke Island. They’re still there, known as Banker Ponies in NC. Their origin has long been attributed to shipwrecks, there are shipwrecks including Spanish Galleons going back to the earliest records kept.

[La Lydia]

There is a guy who comes around Koons Toyota on Leesburg Pike in Tyson’s Corner, VA most days around 11 a.m. with a cooler of delicacies such as tamales and empanadas. The empanadas are delicious. People waiting for their cars to be serviced buy him out.

[bcsco]

That's got to be the silliest thing I have ever seen you type bcsco.

I frankly don't give a damn whether you, or anyone else, thinks it's silly, wrong, or whatever. It's what I've decided. Got it?

[JRandomFreeper]

Chili con frijoles does. Chile con carne can, depending on where it's from, and chili con queso almost never does.

Chili con carne means chili with meat. And it can be done a million ways. And there isn't a real one, except the one you like.

/johnny

[muawiyah]

The typical Spanish transport group would have several ships ~ and one of them would be carrying livestock for the most part.

I would not have cared to travel on that particular ship BUT I am sure they dined well.

There were thousands of private ventures that were never reported and show no evidence here of ever having happened, but there are some extensive reports about some of them.

I suspect the death rates were spectacular for those 16th century voyages ~ but you would have had people coming from every Hapsburg land ~ so they were already here to some extent when your more familiar Brits and French arrived.

As a side venture in looking for these earlier settlements I've been looking for practical connections between the Swedes and the Spanish and there do seem to be "such events" and business deals. I guess they were just too far apart to cause each other trouble, but the Swedes were a house afire in pursuing improvements in common technology ~ better boats, better firearms, better steel, better armor, better machines ~ new designs.

As the Spaniards found out America was a huge place and it took everything they could to do anything at all.

[La Lydia]

I think the best Mexican food in the world is to be had in a corridor that begins in Ciudad Chihuahua and runs north to Cuidad Juarez, crosses the river to El Paso and continues up the Rio Grand Valley through Old Mesilla and Las Cruces (best fresh green chile, Hatch, actually) north to Albuquerque, and from there north to Santa Fe, Chimayo (best dried red chile) and Taos. And yes, lard is a blessed ingredient.

[clbiel]

What about the turducken? That’s GOT to be USA.
Personally, I like the copurnican. That’s a deep-fried cow stuffed with a pig stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a chicken that has a Snickers bar shoved up its a**. ( No duck, too greasy. lol)

[reformedliberal]

Often done w/macaroni.

Neighbor boy described his favorite: basically macaroni and cheese w/chopped chicken filets. This is family that considers fish sticks a dinner entree.

Chili feeds here are bland. Tabasco and macaroni are both offered as garnish/condiment.

But you know what? They are super friendly people and will always set another place at the table. We were raised to be polite, so we smile and say “Thank you!”

[JRandomFreeper]

I've lived for extended amounts of time at 2 places in that corridor. And I'd have to agree.

I also convinced some ancient wimmenfolk that didn't even speak Spanish to teach me some of the 'traditional' dishes.

I don't know what language they spoke, but it wasn't spanish, and it wasn't english. The best cooks were ancient crones that liked me a whole lot better after I lost my store bought teef and really paid attention to what they were trying to teach.

I am grateful to have learned from masters. And what the hell, I can actually cook on a wood cook-stove now. Doesn't take many switches with a green switch to get a point across about temperature control.

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

Henry the 8th timeframe stolen from a Roman Empire era dish. Almost nothing is original.

/johnny

[RegulatorCountry]

The far interior Spanish fort in NC was burned by Indians in 1568, according to Spanish records. This would have been Joara in native parlance or Fort San Juan, established by Juan Pardo, really more of a garrison with thirty or so soldiers and held for less than two years. Seems to have been a coordinated attempt to drive out the Spanish, as forts in SC and TN were burned that same year as well.

[JRandomFreeper]

My favorite form of chili con carne is chili powder (homemade) and cumin powder (fresh ground) smoked in a searing pan until the oils release, followed with a little oil or lard, chopped onions, and when the onions are sauted, add pork stock and roasted and skinned jalapenos and Hatch chilis. Add chunks of pork, put over a smokey fire until the meat falls off the bone, and all the liquid is reduced to a thick sauce. I do generally add fire roasted tomatoes.

For me, that is what I like as chili.

It certainly isn't 'chili' as defined by 80% of America. And it damn sure ain't Wolf Brand(tm). But that's what I like. Chili with meat.

/johnny

[ansel12]

I’m a Texan and bought what from the picture should have been a simple Tex-Mex, folded crisp taco in Kansas City, MO. around 1974.

I forget the other details, but the cheese was American, and the ‘hot sauce’ was ordinary ketchup.

I was also shocked to eat Chili con carne on spaghetti in Kansas City, not too bad by the way.

The taco is as memorable as a hot dog I bought in rural France, the colors and parts were there, a bun, a wiener looking thing, and a mustard of a sort, but it was all totally foreign from an American hot dog.

[ansel12]

Here is a blog of a Texas woman living in New York.
http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-render-lard.html

In this recipe she shows how to make lard, and describes it as easy, with much better flavor.

Excerpt:
“But the best thing about lard is that it’s not bad for you. It has less saturated fat (the bad fat) than butter, while it also has more than twice as much monosaturated fat (the good fat) than butter. And it has none of those pesky trans fats—that is, if it hasn’t been hydrogenated to prolong its shelf life.

And that, my friends, is the problem. Most lard you find at the grocery store has been hydrogenated to make it shelf stable indefinitely, which robs it of its good qualities.”

[Tainan]

A chinese man once told me there is nothing chinese about american chinese food and that it was invented in new york city by a jewish man.

Thats true.
BTW, that Chinese guy has moved back to Taiwan now.
He sells lottery tickets in a shop around the corner from my house.
Has a distinct "inside NYC" accent.
"Hey...You gonna win dis time or not?"

He tells me he's 104 yrs old.
Or 66...which ever one I wanna believe...;)