Mexican cuisine is made from the influences of the Aztecs and Mayans, as well as the imported foods from the conquistadors. The indigenous used many vegetables such as the chili pepper which made Mexican food identified by its many colors. Along with the normal Mexican dishes like quesadillas came many exotic dishes. Some of them consisted of iguana, rattlesnake, deer, spider, monkeys, and ant eggs. A lot of the Mexican dishes offer modern flare to a lot of our foods or beverages we see today in the U.S.
Twentieth century Mexican authors often considered their cuisine as a national identity. The modern evolution of this cuisine is called mestizo which is hybrid blend of Spanish cuisine and native Mexican cuisine. Perhaps the first mestizo food to evolve was the first taco that consisted of a corn tortilla (Mexican) and pork sausage (Spanish). When the Spanish came to colonize Mexico, the colonial cooks created a new cuisine in which old world spice were blended with new world chiles. Mexican authors of the 1920’s attributed this new cuisine not to the “New Spain” but rather attributed this cuisine to the “nationalistic ideology of modern Mexico.” Food has always been an indicator of status in world history. For example, in our modern culture, a petit filet of beef typically indicates a higher social status of the consumer then a piece of fried chicken. The same was the true in Mexico. The wealthy Europeans ate wheat while the Native Americans ate maize. The wealthier colonists traditionally had intricate European based dishes, whereas the common people subsisted on corn. These common people worked to make their corn look intricate, what resulted was the tamale. The first cookbook of “Mexican cuisine” was published in 1831 and was simply entitled El Cocinero Mexicano. The anonymous author wrote using nationalistic vocabulary and attributed the spicer dishes as being truly Mexican. Eventually this Mexican cuisine spread itself around to other countries. By 1898 New York’s finest restaurants were serving Mexican dishes. During the 1910 revolution, the revolutionaries grasped the fact that the world was getting accustomed to the Mexican cuisine and used it as a national identity.
1 comment:
Who knew that the indigenous people of Mexico used to eat Deer? We always assume that what we find on the Taco bell menu is straight out of Mexico, but it was interesting to learn that beef and chicken was not a part of the indigenous diet. Its amazing how we forget the origins of certain crops and foods, and associate them with other regions. For example, you said that it was the Spanish who introduced rice to the Mexican diet, and now we always see rice infused with local Mexican dishes. Fascinating!
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