Friday, June 10, 2011
The land of the free
Commentators from the US like to take a pop at the colonial history of us old worlders, laying on 'all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights' stuff with a shovel. Conveniently forgetting their own gobbling up of Northern Mexico, Hawaii and sundry other places. Most of which they have retained, unlike us old worlders who have returned.
So against a background of their great and the good employing lots of illegal immigrants from Southern Mexico on less than minimum wages, I was amused to discover this week, following two quite separate threads, of their love affair with the cuisine of Mexico. Rather more intense than our own, more prosaic and in any case declining, love affair with the cuisine of the sub-continent.
The first thread concerned another go at lentils (see, for example, May 13th). Not having any kabanos to hand, not even any non-standard chicken ones (something I buy by mistake from time to time), I thought to try the chorizo sold by the butcher in Manor Green Road. At which point the question of gluten arises: do chorizos contain gluten? An important point on which I had forgotten to quiz the butcher. Ask Mr. Google and he comes up with a wealth of chorizo flavoured web sites. Most of them driven by meat cookery nuts from the US. Some of which waxed lyrical about the difference between Mexican and Spanish chorizo. One of which waxed lyrical about the importance of getting the right quality smoked paprika with which to spice up the sausage. Smoked paprika indeed.
As far as I could see, chorizio did not involve anything which looked glutinous. The only possibility was some stuff called fermento, used with the paprika for spicing up; ostensibly a milk product but just the sort of thing that might include wheat flour for some food processing reason or other. After a conference with BH, decided to take a chance and the stuff went down FIL without a problem.
The second thread was chancing across a whole sub-culture of cookery people in the US who enthuse about the variety and sophistication of the 1,000 year old cuisine of Mexico. A continuous tradition, barely disturbed by the arrival of a few gold diggers from old Spain at the half way mark. In the lead is one Diana Kennedy, who actually originated in these islands, but has, it seems, become am important sub-cultural person. I was sufficiently moved to buy a copy of her book 'My Mexico'. It remains to be seen whether I shall do any of her recipes. My one experience of Mexican grub was in Leicester Square and was not too impressive. Hot, red and greasy. Probably not very authentic either.
# posted by Jim @ 7:54 AM 
