Tortillas, Beans, and More

Alicante is one of the more diverse cities in Spain. It certainly has large percentages of Arabs (Algerians, mostly) and Latinos (Colombians mostly.)

Unlike the US, it has relatively few Mexicans. As a result, though Mexican-labeled  food abounds, the quality varies widely from abysmal to tolerable. For the home cook, 

it is difficult, because you have to look around to find basic ingredients in this city. The ordinary supermarket tortillas are generally a disaster even if they carry US brand names.

That is the opinion of this afficcionado of the food of Mexico.  I am sure there are people who will disagree with me. 

Yes, the tacos in the market are good as are those of the Tres Carnales, but they are only so-so good, rather than I need-to-go-back good. In any case there is so much more to Mexican food that tacos. 

I do have to confess that I have not been everywhere such as to the places in suburban and touristy San Juan. 

I stopped at a green grocers shortly before they closed yesterday evening. The owner was working the till. 

On my way home to cook dinner, people eat late here, I had come to buy some limones (called limas here and limes in the US). I

 was making chicken milanesas with french fries and rice, as well as a sopa de tomate with fideo like Mexican mothers make. As a result I needed limones for the milanesas. I could have used the wonderful yellow lemons here, but I prefer limes for this dish. 

 While I cheated on the milanesas and was using pre-breaded ones from Mercadona (sigh), the soup I made myself. The tomatoes are so good right now, it tuned out scrumptious.

At the register the man, who I knew was from Pakistan, asked in somewhat hesitant Spanish (unfortunately I do not speak Urdu) where I was from

He has seen many many times but this is the first time he has broken the ritual of “6,50 Euros…Adiós”.

He recognized my Spanish and said he had lived for 7 years in Houston and then in New York but had left the United States for Spain after being robbed by armed men a few times. It is much safer here, he claimed.  He has two green grocers and a Colombian bakery-cafe in Alicante. 

He told he he loved Mexican food with emphasis on loved. 

But he was frustrated here because he could neither find the food nor the ingredients he needed. The food seems insipid here to him because of a lack of understanding the flavors of Mexico and because the ingredients that come here are not the best. 

We compared notes and agreed. 

Though I did not tell him, I have often thought there is a line running from South Asia through Persia to Mexico as reflected in moles (as if a type of curry) and in the flat bread, not corn tortillas but the flour ones that fit in the world of South Asian and Middle Eastern flat breads. 

In any case, I was delighted by the conversation, not because he agreed with me, but because he made me feel good by seeking me out. He has seen me at his stores many times and this is the first time in a year and three months he has wanted to talk. 

There are a number of Pakistani or Bangladeshi establishments near here. They dominate the green grocery business and the kebab dine-in / dine-outs,  while Chinese merchants dominate the five and dime stores just called Chinos.

In any case, I am going to make my way to a small, Mexican-owned store that competes with the more numerous Pakistani owned grocers to find dried chiles and hopefully good tortillas. 

In the meantime, I shall think about how the Pakistani grocers also dominate the vending of Colombian products in this neighborhood. 

Taco Wars and Erasing the Barrio

David Knowlton

Two fetishes of origin excite the food world more than they should: who and where. They ignite wars of thinly repressed erotic power as someone or somewhere claims a given food.

The questions seem historical but answers must prop up the preening ego and erotic thrust of the one making the claim. We could paraphrase Walter Benjamin, the past appears mid stroke and creates a paroxysm of self-love.  

Such a war burns between the press of Central Texas’ sister cities. Like webcamers they preen and parade to make both San Antonio and Austin claim to be the home of breakfast tacos. 

Contacts and Layers, Dinner at Cancun Cafe

           “Autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression -- these are some of the literate arts of the contact zone. Miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute heterogeneity of meaning -- these are some of the perils of writing in the contact zone.”

                                                                      —Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”

Uxmal, I have never visited you. I have not seen first hand your stone pyramids and palaces, nor have I heard near you the whoosh of Yucatecan nor smelled the spicy depths of achiote, a seed that seasons the food of your people. It not only imparts flavor to the meals people eat near you, known also as annatto or bixa it once colored people to make them attractive, to make them social. 

Though you stand stolidly in Yucatan a monument to a once and maybe, your name escaped and I found it on a gray, smoggy, Salt Lake January in a brick building, near the city’s center, with federalist doors and windows. You were in a place called Cancun, as if the resort on the opposite side of Yucatan where blue waters and gleaming, tall hotels meet, where pyramids from Chichen Itza, not you, stand out on the wall.

Food So Treacherous

“You won’t like that” insisted the fifty-ish woman in a heavy Chinese accent just after I had ordered the Tiger Skin Peppers.  

“Why won’t I like it?  What is it?”

“Green peppers fried with many vinegars.  You won’t like it.  Perhaps you like the Tofu with Mixed Vegetables.”

Like a little boy I found myself getting stubborn.  “No.  I want the Tiger Skin Peppers.”