I've just come from a delicious enchilada dinner at Los Cabos, which I'd been craving for weeks. I finally gave in and stopped off after running errands late this evening. I had a book, Drood, with me---a fictionalized account of Charles Dickens working on his last novel---and it was late enough that I could read undisturbed. Most people would dread eating out alone, but this is one of my greatest pleasures, and probably my worst habit. The novel was engrossing, mysterious and sensationalized, but I couldn't help thinking between chapters about a conversation I had with my sister and brother-in-law last weekend about Mexican food and the changing understanding that we Americans have had of it. I'm probably a pretty average case study in the evolution of "Mexican food" for most midwestern folks.
When I was still a kid in the mid-70's, around my late grade school years, Dad diversified some of his business and was gone at times for a week or two at a time. This brought no change in the discipline of the house (Mom was totally in charge!), but we did have one thing we got to do when Dad was gone: eat frozen TV dinners. Oh, joy!---and there's not a drop of sarcasm in that. We were a farm and ranch family, so we had beef at pretty much every meal, so a change from that was such a treat. Mom didn't mind the break from cooking, I'm sure, and she was always a bargain shopper and would only buy these little slabs of aluminum wonderment when they were on sale, so it wasn't wasteful. My favorite, as I recall, my ONLY desire each time was for a Patio Mexican dinner. It came in the standard 4-block tray, the front one used for enchiladas in the shape of a trapezoid, two angled upper corners for bean and Spanish rice, and the middle spot for what I seem to remember as little mini-tacos. I'm ashamed to tell you here, reader, that I craved those things---they would make my mouth water as I waited to get them home and hovered around the oven as they were defrosting; but I've come to understand that there was probably just some chemical deficiency in my body that was driving me to ingest cumin and chili powder and oregano and mass quantities of salt that I didn't know where to get anywhere else. That's what I tell myself when I look back on that time and cringe deep in my soul. But it opened the door to a culinary world that was more than the great old southern cooking that I was raised on, delicious but often repetitive.
My next exposure to the delight of Mexican food came, if I recall correctly, in my high school home ec classes. (For you young people, this was back in a time when we almost never ate out, so forget fast food.) I have to give credit to Mrs. Delcie Barrett, the greatest home ec teacher ever, for making sure we tried all kinds of things, especially dishes that were influenced by or came from other cultures. It seems completely inconsequential now, but it made a big difference in developing our spirit of adventure when it came to cuisine. In home ec, we tried taco salad for the first time; I still make it the same way we did then, 35 years ago. There was a Mexican chicken casserole that I still have the recipe for, too, using that greatest of all casserole ingredients: Velveeta! I can still eat that stuff in chunks, so I just don't keep it in the house. But I do get a craving for that dish every four or five years, and I make it and can only eat a little. Our food was so much richer back in those days---and THEN we'd add Velveeta to make it go down extra-smooth! The real kicker from home ec was....wait for it...........NACHOS! When my late best friend found I had a RECIPE written on an actual RECIPE CARD for nachos, she just busted a gut. Hey, we had to do the cards for a grade! And the layers had to be done right or they just wouldn't taste good!! And honestly, it was completely revolutionary to me, and to others, I expect.
After that, college: I'm sure this is where Taco Bell entered the scene, though I don't remember going to them back then. What I DO remember is that by the time I was doing my graduate work, our usual restaurant hangout was a Tahlequah institution called Bandido's. They had cheap food, and my boss and eventual best friend loved anything with cheese and didn't eat meat, so Bandido's gave her several options. But the REAL draw was that they didn't bring salsa with your chips unless you requested it. They brought what everyone elegantly referred to at "white sauce." This was some cold dip of indeterminate origin. It wasn't ranch, though it had that texture; it wasn't quite dill or bleu cheese, either, but there was something about it that was more addictive than heroin. I know other restaurants in the area tried to duplicate it, but last I knew, nobody had any idea what it was or how to make it. Now about the enchiladas, burritos, et al: I thought they were pretty good, although I wasn't terribly interested in trying a lot of things. I stuck with my standard enchiladas---and those damned chips and white sauce---for many years. And then..........I moved to Austin.
Ahhhh-stin! There was a stellar Mexican restaurant everywhere you turned. The young professionals I worked with at UT would meet often for lunch, dinner, or drinks all over town; I can't remember the names, but I can picture at least four of them that served Mexican. The first one I went to, Baby A's, was a revelation! What taste----what simplicity---what lack of drenching red enchilada sauce covering everything, and even a minimum of cheese! To say I was hooked would be laughably oversimplifying. I became an enchilada connoisseur, trying them out everywhere. Austin is also where I first tasted that stuccoed drive-through atrocity, Taco Cabana, but fast food doesn't count. What I was meeting, of course, was Tex-Mex. I didn't, couldn't, develop a taste for the hot foods; they burned my tongue, lips, skin, throat, but I loved any of it that didn't set me on fire.
Then, after a year, I beat it home from Texas. Couldn't stand the weather, as Stevie Ray would say, nor the attitude of the UT students. I was so glad to be back....except that suddenly, the Mexican food I had grown up on here was soooo bad. It's a shame I have to tell you this, but I became a total Mexican snob. Nothing satisfied me. So God got me back: I developed gallstones and gall bladder attacks, and for 10 long years (very long) I couldn't eat Mexican food without suffering a brutal attack that started about 35 minutes after I would eat and would continue until the next day. In those 10 years, a beautiful thing happened, though: the authentic Mexican trend. When the gall bladder came out in April of 2001, the first meal I wanted when I was cleared was (you know it!) an enchilada/taco combo platter.
And the options have grown exponentially. I love Los Cabos, Abuelo's is also excellent, and there are any number of authentic Mexican places to choose from in the city. I rarely make my own enchiladas any more---I haven't figured out how to do it without it tasting packaged. I HAVE learned about brining chicken to tenderize and flavor it, and my family members bring back some of the most fabulous hand-made tortillas from Texas. I just have to figure out how to escape that oily, joyously greasy Velveeta for a lighter, easier hand with some queso blanco and green chilies, and my culinary evolution from TV dinner to Tex-Mex-pert will be complete.
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