About Me
hola, gringos! im mexican food. im fucking delicious. you can find me in crazy upscale restaurants all the way to your typical hole in the wall taqueria.Mexican cuisine is known for its intense and varied flavors, colorful decoration, and variety of spices. Mexican gastronomy is one of the richest in the world: both with respect to diverse and appealing tastes and textures; and in terms of proteins, vitamins, and minerals.When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (the ancient city on which Mexico City was built), they found that the people's diet consisted largely of corn-based dishes with chili's and herbs, usually complemented with beans and squash. The conquistadors eventually combined their imported diet of rice, beef, pork, chicken, wine, garlic and onions with the indigenous foods of pre-Columbian Mexico, including chocolate, maize, tomato, vanilla, avocado, papaya, pineapple, chile pepper, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanut and turkey. The totopo (a salted corn tortilla cooked in a fire oven) may have been created as part of this cuisine.Most of today's Mexican food is based on pre-hispanic traditions, including the Aztecs and Maya, combined with culinary trends introduced by Spanish colonists. Quesadillas, for example, are a flour or corn tortilla with cheese (often a Mexican-style soft farmer's cheese such as Queso Fresco), beef, chicken, pork, and so on. The indigenous part of this and many other traditional foods is the chile pepper. Foods like these tend to be very colorful because of the rich variety of vegetables (among them are the chili peppers, green peppers, chilies, broccoli, cauliflower, and radishes) and meats in Mexican food. There is also a sprinkling of Caribbean influence in Mexican cuisine, particularly in some regional dishes from the states of Veracruz and Yucatán. The French occupation of Mexico also yielded some influences as well: the bolillo (pronounced bo-lee-yo, with the "o" as in "bore"), a Mexican take on the French roll, certainly seems to reflect this.Mexican food varies by region, because of local climate and geography and ethnic differences among the indigenous inhabitants and because these different populations were influenced by the Spaniards in varying degrees. The north of Mexico is known for its beef production and meat dishes. Southeastern Mexico, on the other hand, is known for its spicy vegetable and chicken-based dishes. Seafood is commonly prepared in the state of Veracruz.There are also more exotic dishes, cooked in the Aztec or Mayan style, with ingredients ranging from iguana to rattlesnake, deer, spider monkey, and even some kinds of insects. This is usually known as comida prehispánica (or prehispanic food), and although not very common, is relatively well known.A distinction must be made between truly authentic Mexican food, and the Cal-Mex (Californian-Mexican) and "Tex Mex" (Texan-Mexican) cuisines. Mexican cuisine combines with the cuisine of the southwest United States (which itself has a number of Mexican influences) to form Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex cuisine. Another style of cuisine that is commonly mistaken for Mexican food is New Mexican cuisine, which is, of course, found in New Mexico, USA.
