NEW MEXICAN AMERICAN CUISINE

Tex-Mex cuisine

Tex-Mex is a term used primarily in Texas and the Southwestern United States to describe a regional American cuisine that blends food products available in the United States and the culinary creations of Mexican-Americans influenced by the cuisines of Mexico. A given Tex-Mex food may or may not be similar to Mexican cuisine, although it is common for all of these foods to be referred to as "Mexican food" in Texas, parts of the United States, and some other countries. In other ways it is Southern cooking using the commodities from Mexican culture. In many parts of the U.S. outside Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the term is synonymous with Southwestern cuisine.

History

Food historians tell us TexMex cuisine originated hundreds of years ago when Spanish/Mexican recipes combined with Anglo fare. "Tex-Mex" first entered the English language as a nickname for the Texas-Mexican Railway, chartered in southern Texas in 1875.

In train schedules published in the newspapers of the 1800s the names of railroads were abbreviated. The Missouri Pacific was called the Mo. Pac. and the Texas-Mexican was abbreviated Tex. Mex. In the 1920s the hyphenated form was used in American newspapers in reference to the railroad and to describe people of Mexican descent who were born in Texas.In the mission era Spanish and Mexican Indian foods were combined in Texas as in other parts of the Northern Frontier of New Spain.The cuisine that would come to be called Tex-Mex actually originated with Tejanos (Texans of Hispanic descent) as a hybrid of Spanish and native Mexican foods when Texas was part of New Spain and later Mexico.

From the South Texas region between San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, this cuisine has had little variation and from earliest times has always been influenced by the cooking in the neighboring northern states of Mexico. The ranching culture of South Texas and northern Mexico straddles both sides of the border. A taste for cabrito (kid goat), barbacoa (barbecued cow heads), carne seca (dried beef), and other products of cattle culture is common on both sides of the Rio Grande. In the 20th century Tex-Mex took on such Americanized elements as yellow cheese as goods from the United States became cheap and readily available.

Diana Kennedy, an influential food authority, first delineated the differences between Mexican cuisine and Americanized Mexican food in her 1972 book The Cuisines of Mexico. The first use in print of "Tex-Mex" in reference to food occurred in the Mexico City News in 1973.

Award-winning Texas food writer Robb Walsh (of the Houston Press) updated Kennedy and put her comments regarding Tex-Mex cooking into historical and socio-political perspective in The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos (New York: Broadway Books, 2004).

Some ingredients are common in Mexican cuisine, but ingredients unknown in Mexico are often added. Tex-Mex cuisine is characterized by its heavy use of melted cheese, meat (particularly beef), beans, and spices, in addition to Mexican-style tortillas. Texas-style chili con carne, chili con queso, chili gravy, and fajitas are all Tex-Mex inventions.[citation needed] A common feature of Tex-Mex is the combination plate, with several of the above on one large platter. Serving tortilla chips and a hot sauce or salsa as an appetizer is common in Tex-Mex restaurants.Moreover, Tex-Mex has imported flavors from other spicy cuisines, such as the use of cumin (common in Indian food but used in only a few authentic Mexican recipes).

New Mexican cuisine

New Mexican food is a type of regional cuisine originating in the U.S. state of New Mexico and in southern Colorado; it is a subset of Mexican-American cuisine. Although many New Mexican dishes are similar to Mexican and Tex-Mex offerings such as enchiladas and burritos, New Mexican food has a distinct style. New Mexico chiles comes in two varieties, referred to as either green chile or red chile depending on the stage of ripeness in which they were picked.

Green chile is perhaps the defining ingredient of New Mexican food compared to neighboring styles. In the past few years, green chile has grown increasingly more common outside of New Mexico, and it is a popular ingredient in everything from enchiladas and burritos to cheeseburgers, bagels, and pizzas within the state's borders.

History

This native style has been strongly influenced by incoming U.S. tastes since the end of the Mexican-American War. Over time, the style diverged increasingly from similar styles in California and Texas (all of which, like New Mexico, were formerly part of Mexico). This divergence has accelerated in the last few decades, perhaps as a protective response to the "invading" popularity of heavily Americanized "Mexican" food products and fast food.

List of New Mexican culinary terms

The majority of the following terms are borrowed from similar cuisine in Mexico and Spain; Most of New Mexican food is an imitation of Mexican food albeit with the New Mexican standardized green chile, and some minor stylistic differences that are also found in the northern Mexican states. The most distinctive differences result from the influence of native New Mexican cuisine, and the linguistic evolution of certain terms -- for example, the diminutively-suffixed bizcochitos instead of the conventional bizcochos used in some of Latin America and Spain.

Albondigas: meatballs.

Atole: a thick, hot gruel made from corn.

Bizcochito: an anise-flavored cookie.

Burrito: a small-to-medium white flour tortilla, filled with meat, beans, cheese, salsa, or a combination of these, and rolled. Often served smothered with chile sauce and melted cheese; the California-style variant is usually much larger (often twice as large or more), includes rice, and may use colored and flavored tortillas.

Caldillo: (Green chile stew) a thin stew (or soup) of meat (usually beef, often pork or a mixture), potatoes, and green chiles.

Capirotada: a dessert traditionally made during lent festivities made of fried slices of birote or bolillo bread then soaked in melted piloncillo, garnished with coconut, peanuts, orange slices and nut bits, served warm or cold.

Carne adovada: cubes of pork that have been marinated and cooked in red chile, garlic and oregano.

Chalupa: a corn tortilla, fried into a bowl shape and filled with shredded chicken or other meat, and/or beans, and usually topped with guacamole and salsa. (Contrast with the larger and vegetable-laden California-style equivalent known as taco salads; compare with tostadas.)
Salsa picante or picante sauce: A thin, vinegary, piquant (thus its name) sauce of pureéd red peppers and tomatoes with spices, reminiscent of a combination of New Mexico-style chile sauce and Louisiana style tabasco pepper sauce. (Note: American commercial food producers have appropriated the term to refer simply to spicy packaged salsa). Picante's place in Mexican, Tex-Mex and Californian food, where it is extremely common, especially as a final condiment to add more "heat", has largely been supplanted by chile, especially red chile, in New Mexican cuisine.

Sopaipilla: a puffed, fried bread, that is eaten split or with a corner bitten off and filled with honey or sometimes honey-butter (as accompaniment in place of tortillas, or as a dessert), or sometimes stuffed with meat, beans, cheese and chile sauce. Traditionally (and still in the north) served with soups (sopa in Spanish) like posole and menudo, today sopaipillas are sometimes found stuffed (like burritos) and are almost universally served as a dessert with honey.

Taco: a corn tortilla fried into a trough shape and filled with meats, cheese, or beans, and fresh chopped lettuce, onions, tomatoes and cheese; increasingly may also refer to the burrito-like uncooked, rolled flour tortilla variant, by way of the influence of Taco Bell and its popularization of the California-style "soft taco". A corn tortilla is always fried in New Mexico cuisine if to be used in a taco.

Tamale (properly tamal in Spanish; plural tamales): meat rolled in cornmeal dough, wrapped traditionally in corn husks (paper is more common today), and steamed, and served most often with red chile sauce. New Mexican tamales typically vary from other tamale styles in that red chile powder is almost always blended into the masa.

Taquito or taquita: a tightly rolled, deep-fried variant of the taco; contrast chimichangas and flautas.

Tortilla: a flatbread made predominantly either of unbleached white wheat flour or of cornmeal. New Mexico-style flour tortillas are typically thicker and less chewy than those found in, for instance, Texas or California. This results from the lower-protein, more cake-like flour commonly available in New Mexico. New Mexican expatriates who travel back to the state for visits will often bring an extra carry-on to fill with New Mexico tortillas and frozen green chile.

Tostada: A corn tortilla that is fried flat and covered with meat, lettuce and cheese