Dining Guide / Mexican Cuisine

Of all American cuisines Mexican is the most original. Even though it has integrated a fair share of the cuisine of the Spanish conquistadors it is more different from Spanish cuisine than is US cuisine from continental European cuisine, or French Canadian cuisine from French cuisine.

The originality of Mexican cuisine partially results from the integration of the cooking of the indigenous nations like the Aztec, Toltec, and the Mayas and partially from own developments based on the major cultivated grain, corn, and kidney beans.

Both, corn and beans (frijoles), are staple foods nowhere in the world but in a number of Latin American countries, first of all Mexico. Corn meal is used to make tacos (thin crisp unleavened flat bread), and beans appear mainly in the most common and internationally best known Mexican dish, chili con carne. It's so self-understood that beans are in chili con carne that they don't even appear as part of the name such as the two other main ingredients, carne (ground meat) and chili (ground small hot pepper pods).

Chili is something Mexico has in common with a part of the world that otherwise has absolutely no resemblance to Mexico: South and Southeast Asia. The Mexicans not only put it in chili con carne but commonly also in salads (in that case not ground) and on meat, fish, and seafood alike.

Omelets are a very important dish in Mexican cuisine, adopted from the Spanish but further developed into enchiladas. Whereas the original Spanish omelets are thick, with the ingredients mixed into the omelet or pancake dough, the Mexican enchiladas are thin and the ingredients are a filling within the rolled omelet. More often than in the Spanish tortillas, the ingredients in enchiladas remain raw (such as the tomatoes) and cold (such as the cheese).