food. according to me.

The Bastard Children of Regional Cooking

I have been trying to make cheese-less enchiladas. That taste good. While some who read this are presently nodding their heads in disheartened recognition, I shall fill the rest of you in. I don’t like cheese much. It’s the texture. And the flavor. And in the last few years my guts have been less and less tolerant of dairy products in general. So no cheese for me. The way I figure it, why eat a thing and not really like it, effectively diminishing the overall supply for the folks who LOVE cheese? Speaking of, don’t eat figs unless you love them. I’ll eat yours. Thanks.

So, the enchiladas. This is the sad part. I know I am screwing it all up. I am bastardizing a perfectly wonderful tortilla-sauce-meat-cheese arrangement. I really don’t think I should even be allowed to call them “enchiladas,” but, when I use that word you know what I mean to indicate. If I said “really wet riceless baked burrito” it just wouldn’t come together as quickly - or as precisely – as I’d like it to. So when I write “enchilada,” please understand that I am fully aware of the culinary crime I am perpetrating.

My first attempt I modeled after some frozen enchiladas I get from Trader Joes’s. They’re wheat-free, dairy-free AND vegetarian. Tofu enchiladas: sad; but – yes - tasty. They are also filled with zucchini, yellow squash, black beans, and corn. I added to mine olives, chicken, and scallions. They were all right. They were all right because the sauce that I bought was pretty good (more sinning!).

Today I tried again –shredded the chicken this time, used pintos, onions, garlic, corn – no zucchini or yellow squash – and some cilantro from my windowsill. I made a little sauce out of the simmering water from the chicken (bay leaves, garlic, and dried red chiles) and (canned) enchilada sauce. I haven’t tasted them yet. I know they’d be great if I’d just use some damn cheese…

My family has a multigenerational tradition of bastardizing regional dishes. My mother makes this really great simmered chicken dish she calls “chile verde” that contains neither pork nor tomatillos. It’s really good. But it sure as heck isn’t chile verde. Our family’s tamal recipe came from Martha. They are tasty, but there’s no lard, no sauce on the inside.

We are California folk. For many years, we had Mexican friends who would deliver dozens of tamales to our home on Christmas Eve. We’ve all been to México, and we all ate food while we were there. We understand the difference between what we get down there and what we eat at home. Maybe we just can’t help ourselves – authentic Gringo is what we cook, not authentic Méxicano.

Do we owe it to Mexican food, qua Mexican, to do it right? I have given up on Thai and Vietnamese because I can’t even come close (due, for the most part, to the fact that I cannot bring myself to use fish sauce). A friend of mine said the other day that any regional or ethnic food sold in the United States is, to some degree, Americanized. Do we, as a nation, really have such an embarrassing and infantile palate? Or do we expect that whatever we find here just won’t be as good, effectively lowering our standards?