Fiery
Flavors
Mexican Food: A World Masterpiece?
Tomatoes,
chocolate, hot peppers… European cooking owes
a lot to Mexico.
So it’s about time for this fiery country’s
cuisine to be recognized by UNESCO.
On
November 25, 2005, the world will know if Mexican
food will make it onto UNESCO’s list of "Masterpieces
of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity."
The
convention for the preservation of intangible cultural
heritage was adopted by UNESCO in October 2003 and
has already helped to save at least twenty oral or
festive traditions spanning the five continents. For
instance, in Latin America this distinction already
extends to Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead);
La Tumba Francesa (the Music of the Oriente Brotherhood
in Cuba);
and The Oral Heritage and Cultural Manifestations
of the Zápara People in Peru.
But Mexico’s candidature for its cuisine is
a first since its application declares that traditional
Mexican cooking, largely based on the use of corn,
is “a factor of social cohesion between the
different layers of the population, and one of the
most powerful vectors of national identity.”
This ambitious definition and endeavor is vigorously
supported both by the Mexican government and public
opinion.
In
France, knowledge of Mexican cuisine is limited to
chili con carne, which was actually invented in Texas
in the 19th century by a German! Paradoxically, it’s
chili con carne that won over the palates of Parisians
a decade ago in the legion of disappointing Tex-Mex
restaurants that took the city by storm.
Today,
the true symbol of Mexican cuisine is corn, which
constitutes Mexico’s contribution to the alimentary
heritage of humanity. But what about other products
like pineapple, avocado and vanilla? Or hot pepper
and the tomato? It was Christopher Columbus and the
conquistadors that brought back these two ingredients
to Europe, where they would become the pillars of
European cooking. What would Italian food be without
the tomato? Or Hungarian cooking without paprika?
The Espelette pepper would never have become
such a celebrity without its spiciness. The same goes
for the Castelnaudary bean, also brought
back by Columbus, which is responsible for the triumph
of cassoulet. Let us not forget about the turkey,
or dinde in French, which also has Mexican
origins. The conquistadors thought they had discovered
India and therefore this "chicken from India,"
or poulet d’Inde is what the French
refer to today as dindons and dindonneaux.
 |
We
must also thank Mexico for chocolate.
It was in 1520 that Spanish emperor Charles Quint
received the Aztec emperor’s recipe for chocolate,
which included cocoa, white sugar, vanilla, clove,
annatto and chili peppers! Chocolate is ubiquitous
in Mexican cooking in the form of the rich and spicy
mole sauce.
Only
recently has authentic Mexican food appeared in Paris.
A
la Mexicaine, Ay
Caramba and Anahuacalli
are among the few restaurants respectful of the variety,
refinement and freshness of indigenous ingredients,
which, surprisingly, require a great deal of preparation.
These rare restaurants, which support Mexico’s
candidature to UNESCO, lovingly prepare antojito,
a corn-based appetizer, a Michoacan fish dinner or
moles from the Oaxaca Valley.
|
