The Inaccurate Tourist

12. Mexican

What am I supposed to say when I'm asked what traditional Canadian cuisine is like? There's maple syrup and Nanaimo bars, and that's about it -- I've never tasted a Quebecois tourtiere, and I'm not about to admit to poutine. There may be a lot of great family recipes (such as Gramma's strudels), and a few traditional regional dishes here and there -- and even in Vancouver, one can find great Ukrainian food at a homemade church sale -- but there isn't any food or style that is typically Canadian.

To be a bit more clear, our North American attitudes towards the market have resulted in homogenous, brand-name supermarkets selling over-industrialized designer-label food in larger packages at cheaper prices, and sacrificing flavour, quality and nutrition in order to enhance shareholder value. This can also be observed in France (you can always buy your Royale du Cheese at the local McDo's), but the fact is that the food and ingredients really are better (and more expensive) here.

In North America, the fresh bread is made by dropping pre-made frozen dough bullets into an oven, and hotting them up -- in Paris, there are boulangeries that have used the same source of flour for six generations. In North America, you buy your loaf of bread for the week -- in Paris, your baguette might be Kim Powers when you go to bed, but it's Kim Johnson when you wake up. (Sorry Kim, and by the way everybody, try to avoid saying that we put preservatives in our food in North America. It doesn't mean what you think it means.)

If you know me, you will agree that I'm not particularly obsessed with food. However, I have been warned by another Canadian that the subject will insinuate itself into all my conversations until I find myself spending half my time talking about food.

In the meantime, however, I decided to have a dinner party for about ten people this week, and I needed a menu. I had decided to cook a Mexican meal, as authentic as possible, on the grounds that it was interesting and I had brought a bottle of Don Julio tequila from my last trip to Mexico. I consulted with a remote expert (Alberto) who graciously gave me some authentic recipes.

Searching for the ingredients was an adventure by itself. I went to several major and minor grocery stores to find pinto beans, peppers, sour cream, cheddar cheese, cilantro, and flour tortillas. The pinto beans I found (labeled as Coca Rose) in Carrefour, a hypermarché roughly equivalent to a Superstore and FutureShop rolled into one. Bell peppers (or poivrons) are easy to find in all colours, but chile peppers (or piments) aren't. I ended up buying a little jar of chile paste, and then I found a box of fresh chile peppers (unlabeled) at the Franprix supermarket close to my house. Cilantro wasn't easy to find, but I was more successful when I remembered that the seed is called coriander in English. I could only find coriandre (the name for both the seed and foilage in France) growing fresh in a pot.

I ended up finding cheddar cheese at the fromagerie, but I was prewarned that the French consider it an acquired taste, best left unacquired. I picked up some edam, some real mozzarella (completely unrelated to North American mozzarella) and some emmental on the grounds that they all can melt.

You can't find sour cream anywhere in Paris, which is alright because I wasn't sure if it was an authentic ingredient or a Tex-Mex invention (like the margherita, I've heard). For my own personal interest, I purchased a little tub of crème fraîche épaisse, or thick fresh cream. In fact, crème fraîche is very nearly the same thing as sour cream, but only slightly less acidic, and much better (of course).

I spent quite a bit of time roasting and peeling the peppers, which meant grilling them in my toaster oven for about twenty minutes, turning constantly, and then removing the blackened skin and seeds. I saved the ten most intact peppers for the chile rellenos, and chopped up the rest and boiled with a minced garlic and a little water to make a green chile sauce.

The red salsa requires that the tomatoes were slightly carbonized before being mixed with the finely chopped onions and garlic. According to the instructions, I used a molcajete to crush them, otherwise known as a mortal and pestle, otherwise known as a glass and a casserole dish.

The red salsa recipe has an extremely interesting taste -- I think the slightly burnt tomatoes make it sweeter and sharper, and crushing the tomatoes results in a very smooth texture.

The other salsa (or Pico de Gallo) that I made, on the other hand, is made of chopped, fresh vegetables. I really like cilantro, so it wasn't as optional as the recipe suggests. This is also a very simple recipe, especially for somebody talented with a chopping knife (I am not). In fact, I can honestly say that this was one of my favorite salsas that I've ever eaten -- compliments to the recipe not to the chef.

I also made refried beans -- way too many refried beans, in fact. This is also a simple recipe with few ingredients, but a few more steps. The beans need to be soaked for at least eight hours in unsalted water, and then boiled for forty five minutes (my recipe required a slice of burnt onion to be added for the last ten minutes). It's then mashed (with my improvised molcajete), and fried in a few centilitres of butter (or lard if you want) with some minced garlic, salt and pepper. Although I made too much, I'm told that it freezes well.

The trick to making guacamole in Paris is to buy the avocados a long time before you need them. Every avocado in Paris is rock hard. I had heard that apples, especially very ripe apples, release gas that causes other vegetables to ripen quickly -- hence the phrase "one bad apple spoils the barrel". I can confirm that a hard avocado sealed in a bag of apples will be suitably soft and dark green in three days.

The chile rellenos are the roasted and peeled chiles above, wrapped around my three grated cheeses and dredged through flour, salt and pepper, dipped in egg and fried in sunflower oil. In order to make sure everything was served in a timely fashion, I did them a bit earlier, and then baked them again with grated cheese. There are a lot of steps to making these things, but they turned out really well.

The two other side dishes were black rice (probably not authentic as far as I know, but my favorite rice) and corn.

Oh yeah, I also served chicken fajitas -- another great recipe that I found, and which didn't have any reference to the taco seasoning, chili powder, or prepackaged packages of "mexican spice". In fact, it didn't have any spices in it at all other than black pepper. And it turned out very well.

But enough about the food already, you say, how did the soirée go? In fact, the cooking was generally well received (I warned everybody about the dishes that were exceptionally strong, such as the green chile sauce). I had a bit of a problem with getting everything together and hot at the same time, however, so it turned out that I spent a bit more time in the kitchen shuffling dishes than I would have liked. I was fortunate to have a lot of volunteers to help out (and everybody knows that the party really lives in the kitchen).

If you can believe, I ran out of dishes as well -- it tends to happen when you have a meal followed by a dessert (I served ice cream in the colours of the Mexican flag), followed by a second dessert with champagne (both brought by guests, it was a delicious coffee and cream flavoured cake), followed by coffee.

We had a genuine chanteuse (a friend of a friend that gracefully attended, despite the absence of our mutual friend -- and became a direct friend in the process) for some entertainment, some French co-workers, a couple of Italian expatriates, another Canadian co-worker that I knew from Canada, one of the diving instructors, and at least one complete stranger.

We had sangria, red wine from Chile, tequila from Mexico, champagne and coffee from Italy. The sangria was my own version, and my definition of sangria includes any red wine with fruit, fruit juice, and some other liquor.

I'm just sticking some pictures of the Eiffel Tower here, because I had a request for a full picture. At this point, I'm standing on the Bir-Hakeim bridge, named after a city in Libya where the French Foreign Legion had a legendary victory in World War Two. This bridge is connected to the Alley of the Swans, a long and thin island in the Seine with a tree-lined promenade. I found out later that there is a miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty at the end of this island, facing in the direction of the real one on the other side of the ocean.

The rest of this travel log is stolen from an email from Alberto. This is extremely poor etiquette on my behalf, and I will ask for forgiveness (after the fact). Please never do this yourself.

Recipes

The most common pepper for salsas is the Serrano pepper, this is similar to Jalapeño peppers but thinner, If you can not get them then Jalapeño is fine, if not any other raw hot pepper would do. If you get across habaneros these are great but ultra-hot for Canadian standards.

Guacamole - Alberto

• 2-3 avocados (a good avocado is blan in the outside, soft to the touch but not mushy)
• 2-3 Serrano Peppers (depending on how hot they are)
• 1/4-1/2 onion (depending on how strong it is)
• 1/4-1/2 tsp salt (salt to your taste)

Mash the avocados, cut the peppers in little pieces, chop the onion in tiny squares. Mix all ingredients and "presto" you have guacamole.

Mexican Salsa (also known as Pico de gallo) - Alberto

• 2 tomatoes (tennis ball size)
• 2-3 Serrano Peppers (depending on how hot they are)
• 1/4-1/2 onion (depending on how strong it is)
• 1/4-1/2 tsp salt (salt to your taste)

Cut the tomatos in tiny squares, cut the peppers in little pieces, chop the onion in tiny squares. Mix all ingredients and "presto". Some people add a few chopped cilantro.

Red Salsa - Alberto

• 2 tomatoes (tennis ball size)
• 2-3 Serrano Peppers
• 1/4 onion (depending on how strong it is)
• 1/4-1/2 tsp salt (salt to your taste)
• 1 garlic clove

Put the tomatoes in a pan and grill them until the very first tiny signs of charcoal appears. Put everything in a blender, blend it and that's it. If you do not have a blender, you can use a molcajete (mortar and pestle) to smash everything. This is probably one the most traditional way of making salsa.

Am I unfair to Canadian cuisine? Is North American food better than I describe?

What kind of chile pepper am I using anyway anyway?

What happened at Bir-Hakeim?

Posted by The Inaccurate Tourist at March 29, 2002 12:00 PM