Mexican Food

The history of Mexican ‘cuisine’ started thousands of ears ago with the taming of the wild corn. On this basic food, the great civilisations like the Aztecs founded their culinary world. While the poor ate beans and maize, the noblemen dined on quail and turkey. The Mexican food you probably know and love are in fact Tex-Mex dishes adapted from Mexico by the Americans.

Mexican cuisine is a temperamental mix of indigenous Indian ingredients and Spanish invasion in the early sixteenth century. In the course of preparing their daily fare, the Indian and Spanish borrowed from each other, traded recipes across enemy lines, and exchanged ingredients, styles and methods of cooking.

Slowly the warring cultures coalesced and a new cuisine emerged. Food and eating are and will remain the tempering link between the old and the new in Mexico. Cooks of the old world embraced the culinary treasures they found – tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, chocolate, vanilla, pecan nuts, peanuts, squashes, sugar cane and a rainbow of beans. Cooks of the New World were undoubtedly happy in turn to have oranges, limes, melons, wheat, beef and a treasure chest of new spices.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, a French dimension was added as witnessed by many pastries and breads that are still popular today.