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Published
in Gulf News, October 10, 2006
Give food a
chance
I
thought
I'd never make a negative cuisine generalisation, but I really don't
like Mexican food. This troubles me because Southern California
is probably the best place in the world, after Mexico, for Mexican
food. I want to like it - when else am I going to exposed
to so many authentic dishes that go way beyond tacos and burritos?
Almost every strip mall here has a tiny restaurant advertising its
menudos and regional specialities. All this time I thought "menudos"
just meant "menu". I've just discovered that it's a tripe
soup and it's now on a list of things to try in my new campaign.
I love
how learning about food from a country is like zooming in on a map.
What you thought of as a contiguous area starts to resolve into
towns, neighbourhoods and streets. What I thought of as just "Mexican
food" differs widely among regions in Mexico.
After
a few desultory fish tacos, burritos and bean-centric dishes, I'd
essentially given up on Mexican, until a friend made a prawn dish
from the Veracruz region. It was delicious - light and tangy and
full of the flavour of jalapeno. I was intrigued and resolved to
resume my search.
So
it was with great anticipation last weekend that I sought a local
restaurant called El Moctezuma. It serves food from the Mexican
state of Oaxaca ("wa-hah-ka") - a region known for its
pre-Hispanic ingredients and recipes, and its rich, complex sauces
called moles (mole-ays). I was after the mole negro because among
its 20 or so ingredients - including several different kinds of
chilli pepper - is chocolate. This is chocolate used the way the
Mayans and Aztecs did, long before the world discovered and adopted
the cacao bean.
I was
pleased to find that my wife and I were the only non-Mexicans in
the tiny restaurant. The waitress came over and was soon giggling
away because she was embarrassed about her English, and we weren't
able to summon any intelligible Spanish. Luckily the menu had English
explanations for the most part, so in part English, part pointing
and part giggling we managed to convey what we wanted.
Unusually,
we had hot chocolate first. I was hoping it would be chocolate in
its elemental form - the bitter, chilli-spiked drink the Mayans
loved. It was, instead, one of the sweetest, creamiest hot chocolates
I've tasted. I suspected a slight heat from chilli, but when I asked
the waitress she looked horrified at the thought.
Mole
negro is like Frost's woods on a snowy evening - lovely, dark and
deep. Well, more dark and deep than lovely. Spilled generously over
chicken, the only darker savoury sauces I've seen have been made
from squid ink. It was bitter, slightly sweet and also had a range
of smoky and peppery flavours. It was new to me, and I'm not sure
I liked it. It tasted to me as if it needed the One Flavour "to
bring them all and in the darkness bind them".
El
Moctezuma also serves large platefuls of fried crickets for $3.
They have been described as "potato chips with legs",
and if I'd had a companion I'd have tried them. When I suggested
ordering a plate, my wife just gave me a look that would have turned
even a mole negro pale.
Apart
from crickets, there are as many as eight other moles to try, as
well as the seafood of Veracruz to discover, so I'm not going to
give up just yet. While I'm here in Southern California, I want
make sure that it's Mexican food that lets me down, and not the
other way around.
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