A number of my columns have dealt with food. Growing up in this area, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve become accustomed to the real spicy stuff many moms serve several times a week.<\/p>\n
But first, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s define some terms:<\/p>\n
As an inveterate eater of southwestern cuisine, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m continually amused when I read recipes for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hot Chile Sauce.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d First, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a sauce; chile is a food in and of itself, and the only modifications can be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153red,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153green\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christmas, which gifts people with two distinct flavors.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
One recipe I came across listed the proper ingredients: a bit of oregano, a bay leaf for flavor, stew meat and the rest.Oh, did the recipe preparers forget the crucial ingredient: chile? There it is: This recipe calls for a teaspoon of chile powder. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough even to activate one sweat gland on my late uncle Juan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s forehead.<\/p>\n
When Billy Wilder directed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Some Like it Hot,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, many of us southwesterners assumed the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s movie would be about unending trips to restaurants in big cities. Instead there was a lot of music and cleavage (which I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t object to.)<\/p>\n
Wilder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s movie was based in the big city; I lived near one, Chicago, at the time, and told myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Self, why not take your girlfriend to the State-and-Madison area and search for some genuine chile that you crave so much?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The one restaurant, whose menu and neon signs were solely in Spanish, seemed like a good place to start. The crew spoke only Spanish. I started with a bowl of red.<\/p>\n
Bletch!<\/p>\n
A can of Campbell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Soup with a single speck of pepper would have been spicier. When I asked for something to jump-start my dormant sweat glands, I got a bottle of Tabasco Sauce, which increases the heat but not the flavor. My date, Carol, liked the food. Of course, she grew up in the Midwest and therefore lacked my gustatory experience.<\/p>\n
Visits to a handful of other Spanish restaurants in that ethnically diverse area yielded other places whose management must have swiped their red chile recipe from the first Se\u00c3\u00b1or Taco place we visited.<\/p>\n
Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d often invited me for some Polish\/Bohemian\/Czech fare, soon heard of our woeful tale and made amends for the Toddling Town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lack of genuine ethnic restaurants. The elder Kucias did a lot of research in preparation for a feast as good as my mom used to prepare.<\/p>\n
In those days, microwave ovens were a novelty, but what was called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mexican food\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was available only in the frozen-food section at the A&P. It was called a TV dinner.<\/p>\n
Point No. 1: It was tastier than the chicken-soup-with-Tabasco-sauce concoction I once tried;<\/p>\n
Point No. 2: It was still miles and millions of taste buds away from what we got in New Mexico.<\/p>\n
Of course, I made merry over Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 substituting tamales for kalachkee and tacos for kartoflanka, but the substituted version didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cut it.<\/p>\n
In anticipation of my arrival, Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents borrowed some Mexican LPs, by 101 Strings. And Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s younger sister even wore a rose in her hair and a fiesta dress, to seem authentic.<\/p>\n
I realize I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking back 50 years, and that Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents had good intentions. I was appreciative of their efforts. But now that decades and Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents have all passed, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m free to express my opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A number of my columns have dealt with food. Growing up in this area, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve become accustomed to the real spicy stuff many moms serve several times a week. But first, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s define some terms: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Se\u00c3\u00b1or Taco\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a term that should never be construed as an insult. It simply refers to a kind of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1635,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}