Mexican cooking Police?
 

Mexican cooking Police?

If you want to rant a rave about what is authentic, concerning Mexican
recipes! Why don't you (all) that belittle the people that submit
recipes to this site create "YOUR OWN"????? Call it alt.food.authentic-
mexican-cooking? Find 15 people to moderate it. 5 from southern Mexico,
5 from central Mexico and 5 from northern Mexico. They will concur among
themselves as to weather or not a recipe is truly authentic. And delete
the vary offensive POST!!!

Good grief, sometimes the verbiage I read from people that are in behest
over what someone has posted because they do not consider the post to be
authentic, is the type of egotistical person that wishes they had a
button on there computer that would delete the file and the person
posting it! Because they are cromagnumbunknoid ignoramuses! And do not
deserve to post anything.

"WOW" a "NUBIE" has discovered "USNET" and asks for a salsa recipe and
out of the woodwork are the alt.food.mexican-cooking police and dump
there egotistical bombastic attitude on them like how they dare ask for
a salsa recipe again?

If you don't want to help then what the @#$% are you doing HERE?

I Am MPH.


--
You Can Plan All Yoy Want To! But You Can Only See As Far As The Day
Takes You
MP Hodges

>From: Whitt Alvin Patronos Nardy

> Why don't you (all) that belittle the people that submit recipes to this
site create "YOUR OWN"????? Call it alt.food.authentic-mexican-cooking? Find 15
people to moderate it. 5 from southern Mexico, 5 from central Mexico and 5 from
northern Mexico. They will concur among themselves as to weather or not a
recipe is truly authentic.

What, exactly is "authentic" Mexican cooking, anyway? Just like the mixture of
people of all races from all over the world that populate modern Mexico, the
cuisine of modern Mexico is a melange, as well...

Determining the authenticity of an auguably "Mexican" dish may be like
untangling a bucket of worms...

I suppose the most authentic "Mexican" dish possible might be a stew of
xoloquintle or peccary or venison, white corn, chili peppers and the Aztec
version of corn tortillas, food with no European or Asian influence whatever...

And, somebody on another NG once pointed out that Mexican Indians ate something
like 200 species of insects, but nobody has published any authentic Mexican
recipes that include insects so far as I have discerned...

I remember watching a TV video magazine that showed an Indian street vendor
selling Mexican cockroaches (not the same as German cockroaches at all!) on the
streets of Mexico, and she would ocasionally reach into her bag and shyly eat
one. The interviewer tried one and said that it tasted "like cinnamon"...

Mesoamerican culture thrived on four vegetables, as I recall, maize, beans,
squash, and the other one that I disremember at the moment. Mesoamerican tribes
revered the vegetables as the Holy Four, according to anthropological material
I've read...

Any other vegetable is probably an import from Europe or Asia, and its
inclusion couldn't be called "authentic" for the purposes of "authentic"
Mexican cooking by the "Mexican cooking Police"...

What is "authentic" in Mexican cooking goes beyond regionality also. It also
includes social class, which was very important in the Spanish culture at the
time of the Conquista and still is.

The Spanish treasury was low on funds in the 15th century. The Holy Roman
emperor, Felipe, lived in Madrid and was fighting the Protestant Reformation.
In order to raise money, he sold titles. The lowest rank of nobleman was called
a "hidalgo" and the title could be bought for as little as $50...

Having assumed the title of hidalgo (Spanish for "son of somebody important"),
the petty nobleman couldn't do manual labor, it was beneath his dignity, and,
having no money, the hidalgos set off to the new World to gain their fortune.
They were called "conquistadores"...

The hidalgos might have refused to consume the foods that the common people ate
at the time of Cortez. Wealthier modern Mexicans may still not care to eat
what poorer Mexicans eat...

One must also consider the "Criollo Factor's" influence on Mexican cooking...

A criollo is a person of European descent, living in Latin America, who seeks
to preserve Spanish culture and cuisine. The 19th American definition of
"creole" was more interested in the racial mixture of the person of Spanish or
French descent with people from Africa, but the other definition of "creole" is
that the "creole" is a person who is trying to preserve European culture in the
New World...

The criollos in Mexico had a basic problem with
land transportation and the availability of Asian spices and basic food
supplies that Europeans were accustomed to...

Criollos might live along the sea coast in areas where it was faster to get to
a South American sea port, to the Caribbean islands, or even to Spain, more
easily than they could get to Mexico City...

So, a 19th criollo might have gone "home" to
Spain or Cuba or Peru and brought back "authentic" recipes from whatever
country he called "home" and tried to adapt those recipes to the available
materials and so a melange of cultures social classes and ideas produced
"Mexican" cooking...

Then there is the "Mi Abuelita" factor. How did grandma prepare whatever
arguably authentic Mexican dish she fixed for the hungry children hanging
around her kitchen?

People who grew up eating a Mexican dish prepared a certain way become
accustomed to a certain style, certain spices and textures, amount of liquid in
the Spanish rice, etc...

My own grandmother had a Hispanic origin and name...

Nobody in the family ever pronounces it correctly. My umpteen great grandfather
was a Jew who fled the persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. His Hebrew name
is long forgotten, the inquisitors gave him a Spanish name and called him a
"marrano", a pig. He fled from Portugal to France, England, and wound up in
Maryland 300 years ago...

Grandma died when I was still a baby. I doubt that she ever prepared *anything*
Mexican or Spanish or Portuguese or French, as she was born in the Dakota
Territory and eventually wound up living in Southern California among the
Mexicans and Californios and people who denied being Mexican, but claimed to be
"Spanish"...

I got my own first taste of Mexican cooking in the old adobe houses of
Californios and refugees from northen Mexico who fled the Mexican civil war at
the beginning of the 20th century and who had converted their homes into family
style restaurants...

My first adventure with Sonora-style cooking led me to believe that pork
tamales and Knudsen's cottage cheese should always be served together, and
that's what I always wanted my Mom to serve me...

Nobody ever seems to understand my disappointment at not getting my Knudsen's
cottage cheese with my tamales...





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"krusty kritter" > wrote in message
...
> Mesoamerican culture thrived on four vegetables, as I recall, maize,
beans,
> squash, and the other one that I disremember at the moment. Mesoamerican
> tribes
> revered the vegetables as the Holy Four, according to anthropological
> material
> I've read...


Chile peppers.


>
> Any other vegetable is probably an import from Europe or Asia, and its
> inclusion couldn't be called "authentic" for the purposes of "authentic"
> Mexican cooking by the "Mexican cooking Police"...


Are you saying pre-Hispanic Mexicans only knew four vegetables? There was
also the tomatillo, avocado, nopal, amaranth, tomato, chayote, sweet
potato...

Peter

[...]

>From: "Peter Dy"

>Are you saying pre-Hispanic Mexicans only knew four vegetables? There was
also the tomatillo, avocado, nopal, amaranth, tomato, chayote, sweet potato.

What I should have said was that the "Holy Four" of Mesoamerican agriculture
were the four main staple vegetables...



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