Home » Teaching Life » TEFL Mystery #4: What The Hell Is Going On With Mexican Food Abroad?
TEFL Mystery #4: What The Hell Is Going On With Mexican Food Abroad?
I will confess here that this post is not really about any mystery…it’s a thinly veiled attempt to present a topic that’s been on my mind as of late in a way that is not obviously a rant. When I noticed that Guy Courchesne posted about red hot chili peppers, it struck me: the time is now.
I’m not Mexican or Mexican-American and I haven’t even been to Mexico, but I am from Chicago and have even lived in Pilsen (the neighborhood on Chicago’s near south-west side originally named after the Czech town where many of its early inhabitants came from), now home to one of the largest Mexican-American communities in the US. There are colorful murals on buildings and lots of good cheap Mexican restaurants. It’s one of my favorite places in Chicago.
I say this to establish my credibility as not an expert but as someone with a reasonable awareness of Mexican food.
I’m very much into other cultures and respect that things will not be the same abroad as at home. I don’t expect to find peanut butter everywhere, and have even resigned myself to buying and soaking dry black beans (because I can’t find them canned). I’m not going to author any guides to Mexican cuisine, but I can tell you what it doesn’t include:
BROCCOLI and CAULIFLOWER (as served in Ljubljana, Slovenia). PEAS and MUSHROOMS (as on offer in Bratislava, Slovakia). It’s not bad food. But it’s sure not Mexican.
I can deal with a lack of the right spices. This can be hard to get right. But some things just do not belong in Mexican food. This may become a PR crisis for Mexico: other countries throwing together some local vegetables and passing it off as one of the finest cuisines in the world. And I should point out that this issue is not only relevant to me personally; I have come to believe good Mexican food is what tops the “What I Miss From Home” list of many a TEFLer.
Please vote:
By Katie | Permalink
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Yikes. The pizza sauce and/or ketchup sounds like the worst to me. It is probably slightly humorous that I’m so judgmental and have yet to have “real real” Mexican food - most of the stuff you mention wouldn’t be so bad to my palate. But I empathize with the frustration. Maybe a group of TEFL bloggers together can make a difference.
I’ll gladly be the flag bearer in the battle to Save Real Mexican Food.
You can start by boycotting Taco Bell.
[...] As I may have mentioned before, I am a fan of Mexican food, and good Mexican food is one of the things I miss greatly when I am away from home. Here are a couple of simple but good Mexican-ish recipes I’ve recently indulged in, which don’t require specialty ingredients: [...]
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Rather than vote, here are some of things I’ve seen in Mexican food in Canada that simply don’t belong.
Grated cheddar cheese. Worse when it’s still cold topping a taco. Cheddar is very hard to find in Mexico and if you do find it, it’s imported. Now, I love cheddar cheese, but not in a taco.
That ground, spicy hamburger meat looking stuff they put in what they call ‘beef tacos’. first, the spice isn’t right…cumin or something. Second, hamburger meat goes in hamburgers, not tacos.
Pizza sauce or ketchup (!!!) masquerading as salsa. I know that the Canadian palate is unaccustomed to spicy hot chilis, but it’s a grave insult to put ketchup on a taco, or to use a sauce that is sweet.
Burritos. You’d only find these as common fare in northern Mexico. Not very common at all in the central or southern states.
Jalapeños. You’ll find them here and there but they are certainly not one of the main chili peppers used for salsas or even as garnish. If you like the green ones, find thee the chili Serrano, or Poblano. If you like the red ones, as I do, chile de arbol, morita, or passila are good bases for salsa, each producing a distinct result. Don’t forget garlic.