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SOUTHWESTERN COOKING
Southwestern
cooking includes New Mexico, Texas, and southern California. Its most
salient characteristic is its entirely Spanish and Native American
orientation, and, unlike other parts of the U.S., has no influence
to the cooking of England and France.
The chile sets this food in its own
sphere. First grown in Mexico and Guatemala, the chile had an enormous
impact on cooking all around the globe when Portuguese and Spanish
traders first exported it.
It had virtually no impact on
American cooking north of the Mason-Dixon line or, for that matter,
anywhere outside of Spanish colonial territory. But within the Spanish
territories, chile, in all their many forms and fires, reigned
supreme.
Other basic ingredients used in
Southwestern cuisine are beans, hominy (called "samp" when made from
white corn and "hulled corn" when made from yellow corn), corn and
flour tortillas, pork, avocados, pine nuts, cilantro, limes, rice,
and, in some regions, cheese.
Red beans of the Southeast give way
to wonderful black beans. New Mexicans are famous for their green
chiles. Green chiles are allegedly addictive, and they have such
a power over the palate that virtually no day or dish can escape their
fresh and utterly unique flavor.
Tostadas, tamales, tacos, burritos,
and flautas, the common fare of Mexican restaurants, have
equally strong roots in what is now American soil.
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