On Apr 10, 2008, at 10:58 PM, Madhu Menon wrote:
Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote:
Ten, at the YWCA on Parliament Street in Delhi, serves Mexican food
(Quesadillas, especially) that I enjoyed eating; but I have never
had an opportunity to sample authentic Mexican food.
I think that is indeed the crux of the problem. Most people don't
have a point of reference for "authentic" Mexican food (yours truly
included.) The only thing that they are familiar with is the Tex-Mex
stuff - dishes you can find at places like IndiJoe's, Ruby Tuesday,
TGIF, etc. When the impression so many people have of the cuisine is
that it's "meat in a tortilla with cheese and some stuff on the
side", it's an uphill task to elevate it to any kind of "fine
dining" concept. It's far less risky to sneak in a couple of dishes
as part of some fusion or coffee shop menu.
Most Americans have never had authentic Mexican food, in large part
because it is only widely eaten in relatively small portions of the
United States and what you get everywhere else being heavily
bastardized. For example, most styles of authentic Mexican food
rarely use cheese, whereas cheese practically defines it in many
locales in the US. Consequently, most people who think they dislike
Mexican food have never actually eaten it; the true style is generally
very appealing to a broad range of palates that find the overly greasy
fast food implementation distasteful.
Authentic Mexican food is actually really healthy, being comprised
primarily of lean meat, vegetables, a lot of legumes, and maybe some
unrefined grain products. Deep-fried cheesy things are nowhere in
sight.
There is a pretty broad range of characteristic styles across Latin
America, but I've only really found three styles that are done justice
in the US:
1.) "Tex-Mex", which is authentically rendered primarily in the
border country of Texas, from about San Antonio on west. Because it
has travelled far and reasonably well, it is the style most Americans
are familiar with. Still, it will taste a bit different and a lot
better in south Texas; the big restaurant chains do a pale and
somewhat greasy imitation of it.
2.) Desert Mexican, which is what you would find in the border towns
of Arizona such as Tucson. This is among the most authentic styles,
but I never see it elsewhere due in no small part to its dependency on
the local climate and ecology e.g. sun-desiccated meat and cactus.
The "shredded beef" often used in mass market Mexican food is often a
half-assed substitute for marinated sun-desiccated beef that has been
shredded and reconstituted with water -- you can see outdoor meat
cages hanging from poles in parts of Tucson. No one that has ever
eaten both would confuse one for the other, as the character and
flavor is very different.
3.) West Coastal Mexican, which uses a lot of seafood and tends toward
arid tropical ingredients. In the US, the main place you can get an
authentic version of this is San Diego. You can find bastardized
knock-offs that vaguely resemble the real thing in many parts of the
US now. San Diego benefits from cultural, ingredient, and cuisine
contiguity with the parts of Mexico famous for this type of cuisine.
Good indicators of authenticity are the use of limes (not lemons) and
cabbage (not lettuce).
I like Mexican food a lot, but generally avoid what most Americans
would call Mexican food. You can find really solid tex-mex and
coastal Mexican if you know where to look in many towns these days,
usually small restaurants run by Mexicans. You can get similar tasty
food in most of Central America, but in many parts of South America
they tend to European-ize their versions of many of these dishes.
I am very fond of desert Mexican, but the only place I ever find it is
southern Arizona. I occasionally make it from scratch myself,
particularly the slow desiccated meat (in an oven -- climate is
wrong), and have discovered that it is hugely popular with the
Vietnamese around here who never envisioned Mexican food as anything
like it, having a popular but much less developed concept of
desiccated meat in their own cuisine.
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
