The unexpected lessons of Mexican food - mexican restaurant corn side dish

When I was 5 years old, I first discovered cooking, and the smell of the Earth from the boiling pinto beans attracted me into the kitchen. It was my dad.
He dripped them into a slippery frying pan and smashed them into a paste.
I started pulling his apron strap and begging to know the name of the mixture.
"This is made by your grandmother," he said, stirring the bubbling brown stew while holding cumin.
"I will teach you how to do it. Here, try it.
He lifted the dripping spoon into my mouth.
I still have a slight cumin and soft bean smell on my tray, just like a spicy fingerprint.
As long as I remember, I felt the push and pull of mixed-blood growth in the United States.
On the Mexican side of my house, I am called White.
Although I speak Spanish, this is the formal form learned from the classroom and reading, not the one you get by bargaining with the local owner about the price of avocado, or argue with parents for a ridiculous curfew.
On the other hand, my cousins call me "Mexican" and I am a white Mexican despite my similar skin tone.
However, cooking taught me to resolve frustration by adding sour cream, coriander, cayenne pepper and tender meat to create food.
I can make a food that is not necessarily Mexican or American. ------
Since I was 6 years old, my father of cultural anthropologist has taken me to the border in South Texas for his research project.
He wanted to show me a small corner of his hometown where the iconic Latino food nacho was born. We ended our 14-
An hour's drive from Colorado, the sun begins to fall behind desert wasteland known as West Texas.
We went to the Best Western hotel for asylum, the only hotel close to hundred miles.
The British stare at my darkness
He answered the question we had not asked: "We are not in the room.
He shuffled his way to avoid eye contact.
When my father pulled me near the counter, he strengthened his grip on my little hand and asked why the parking lot was empty if it wasn't in the room.
"Meeting," the man said, staring at me and my father without blinking.
We spent the night on a run-down mattress supported by a lump of coal from another motel a few miles away.
When dawn came, we started our journey again, as if nothing had happened.
"I hate white people," I whispered as we approached the sign that welcomed us to Eagle Pass, my father's hometown.
He pulled the car down the road and slammed the brakes.
He sighed, wiped the sweat from his forehead and glasses, and asked me not to say those words again.
"What would your mom feel if she heard you say that," he said . ". ------
We arrived at the destination Eagle Pass in Texas.
We shuttled through the bustling streets of the city center, lined with banks, currency exchanges and a line outside the local meat market and bakery winding through a convenience store where people bought Ice Cola while waiting.
From here we see the concrete bridge that connects Mexico to the Rio Grande River in the United States.
When I was in my 60 s, my father carefully prepared bait on both sides while fishing catfish, carp, turtles and crocodiles.
Now, the thermal sensors and armed guards prevent him from crossing freely.
We parked in front of an old hotel and started hanging out in town.
In the Mancha meat market and bakery, the room was filled with a sharp, sweet taste of caramel sugar, which came out of the oven next to it and cooked sweet bread with a strawberry coat.
On Saturday, however, the stench of bloody, uncooked cattle heads lurks in front of empanadas and sweet bread. Barbacoa, slow-
Cooked Beef has been a specialty of the Mancha family for 70 years.
They divide a few beef heads every week and put the beef heads on their thighs.
High container, lower it to a hot pit, behind the bakery, lined with mesquite coal, wake up at 6 in the morningm.
The next morning, you will find the tender and juicy aroma of meat and invite you to breakfast.
On Sunday, they sold more than a hundred pounds of meat for $3 a pound.
That night, hordes of Mexican and British mothers waited patiently for their bounty.
There were only two weekends and the Eagle Pass did not have barbacoa: one time the Mancha elders died of a heart attack, and the other was a few years later when his wife joined him.
Became one of the first Hispanic to receive a PhD. D.
In his project at the University of Pennsylvania, he felt heavy whenever my father returned to Texas.
He likes to hide his achievements from most people.
When he stopped at a friend's Bakery, bank and law firm in Eagle Pass, they always greeted him with lovely shouts and funny insults.
But in one of the few dinner invitations and barbecues, he felt that he was gradually separated from the past.
Sometimes I think my dad will try to fix his contact with Texas through his students, especially minority students.
He directed national studies and presided over the anthropology department as a mentor for the first generation of students of color in their spare time.
At lunch, he painted their life plans on ketchup
Dirty the napkins and tell them not to take any garbage from the losers.
Most of these students go to graduate school or work professionally in high school.
Power "things.
"At none of these meetings I heard him tell students how to return to their previous lives after graduating from college, Santa Fe, Detroit or Los Angeles.
Most likely, he is trying to find a way for himself. ------
We traveled along the international bridge and collided with a fixed train of cars waiting to enter the United States. Our two-
Waiting at customs seems nothing compared to their four hours
Wait an hour in the heat of Texas.
The nearby dog's barking in Spanish and screaming in anger made me jump, but before I turned around my dad was pulling my shirt and it was a sign that I was moving on.
The modern style of antique lamps and the dim glow of wooden tables makes it feel like an underground bar, not a restaurant.
In the 1950 s, it used to be a gathering place for politicians in Mexico and Texas, including President Lyndon Johnson and Maverick County Judge Roberto Bibb, to indulge in different ways of voting in Mexico
Like those days, people still spend their money on beer, miranna, a famous Corn Flakes invented by the restaurant, according to folklore.
The waiter brought us a bunch of freshly baked hot tortillas, each with some fried pinto beans, a small piece of cheddar cheese on it, and a piece of cheese on it.
We ate the corn flakes like a group of hungry short guns.
For the next 10 minutes, we communicated with purring and groaning, only to know that the smell in our mouth exploded, and the dense flow of cheese bubbling in our stomach.
According to my father's story, nacho represents the fusion between the new immigrants of the Spanish colonists
World Dairy, Aztec corn and Chile.
Over the past few centuries, the evolution of this recipe has been first the independence of Texas and California from Mexico and then the 20 th century immigration boom.
By the age of 1980, even though Cortes and Montezuma have withered on the pages of history, their spirits still live in hot plates of these fried delicacies. ------
In my third year of college, I decided to explore the area south of the border.
But this time, I flew over Pedras neglass and landed in the capital of Argentina, where the Mexican restaurant made my mouth bitter and my wallet dry.
Argentina's diet includes rich cheese, juicy steaks and fluffy bread, which are the food of millions of Western European immigrants in the early 20 th century.
The distance of the country and the lack of Mexican immigrants have left Argentines confused about the simplest Mexican dishes.
Huevos rancheros scraped in my mouth and the weak margar tower made me thirsty.
I miss spicy food very much, so I travel every two weeks to the suppliers of jalños in Bolivia, not so much to buy produce as to the drug trade.
Something that needs to be changed
So I started cooking.
I spent the day before the feast collecting ingredients from all over town.
The Bolivian woman on the street sold me a 10-year-old Mexican.
One minute by subway, I went to the eating shop where I bought the black bean dry and took the coach, and I came to the only Mexican restaurant that sold personal tacos for a dollar.
I asked gillemo to cook the black beans, and I cut the tomatoes into small pieces.
Although he claims to be vegetarian, he rarely eats beans with a childlike curiosity and enthusiasm and crush them in a frying pan.
In addition to the luxurious restaurants in the upper class of the city, he never knew about Mexican food and he thought it was a real way to learn about Mexican culture from real live Mexicans.
"Technically, I'm American, gillemo," I told him when I started cutting avocado.
"My father is the first generation. my mother is white.
I'm considered Hispanic.
"Well, I only know you," he said . "
"If you can speak Spanish, you can make Mexican food, the name is Montanio, and I can't see who you will be.
"I poured the beaten eggs into the frying pan of sizzsizz and swallowed up the fried tortillas until the batter became thick.
"This is Mexican farmhouse food," I sprinkled the pepper in.
"When the ingredients in your home are about to change, you throw them all into the pan to eat.
Guillermo and his friends took a spoonful of hearty eggs from the frying pan and before I stabbed a piece of eggs for myself they wanted more.
I applied the crushed beans of gualmo to the fried tortillas, covered them with a thick piece of cheddar cheese and a piece of jalapeno, and then gave it to gualmo.
He ate it all greedily.
After a few seconds of chewing in a hurry, he stopped, opened his mouth and screamed, "it's too hot!
Feel like hell on my tongue!
Just before he had two full-bodied margar towers, he said.
A few hours later, he drank a bottle of tequila in bed and finally knew what the "real" Mexican food tasted like.
Over the next few months, I often cook for my Argentine friends and tell stories about cooking with my dad.
They have always noticed that my grammar and vocabulary are different from theirs.
Even though I use Spanish as a second language, they always call me their "Mexican friend ". ”------
My dad and I ate at Chipotle when we didn't want to cook or go out.
I ordered a veggie burrito filled with grilled peppers, wet black beans, sticky white rice and cheese.
My dad usually ordered the same, but tortillas
Because his doctor-
Authorized diet for hypoglycemia
Although he likes to call Chipotle "Mexican PF Chang", he likes the taste and makes friends with everyone who works there.
We know the Mexican women behind the counter, we always tell the story of Pedras neglass, while they lament Mexico City and boast that their children have won university scholarships.