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Some Italian Restaurants: Mexican
IMPRESS OF MEXICO Running through all the fabric of San Francisco's history is the thread of Mexican and Spanish romance and tradition, carrying us back to the very days when the trooper sent out by Portola first set eyes on the great inland sea now known as San Francisco Bay. It would seem that the cuisinaire most indelibly stamped on the taste of the old San Franciscan would, therefore, be of either Spanish or Mexican origin. That this is not a fact is because among the earliest comers to California after it passed from Mexican hands to those of the United States, were French and Italian cooks, and the bon vivants of both lands who wanted their own style of cooking. While the Spanish did not impress their cooking on San Francisco, it is the cuisine of the Latin races that has given to it its greatest gastronomic prestige, and there still remains from those very early days recipes of the famous dishes which had their beginnings either in Spain or Mexico.
There is much misconception regarding both Spanish and Mexican cooking, for it is generally accepted as a fact that all Mexican and Spanish dishes are so filled with red pepper as to be unpalatable to the normal stomach of those trained to what is called "plain American cooking." Certain dishes of Mexican and Spanish origin owe their fine flavor to discriminating use of chili caliente or chili dulce, but many of the best dishes are entirely innocent of either. The difference between Spanish and Mexican cooking is largely a matter of sentiment. It is a peculiarity of the Spaniard that he does not wish to be classed as a Mexican, and on the other hand the Mexican is angry if he be called a Spaniard. But the fact remains that their cooking is much alike, so much so, in fact, as to be indistinguishable except by different names for similar dishes, and frequently these are the same. IMPRESS OF MEXICO The two famous and world-known dishes of this class of cooking are tortillas and tamales. It is generally supposed that both of these are the product of Mexico, but this is not the case. The tamale had its origin in Spain and was carried to Mexico by the conquistadors, and taken up as a national dish by the natives after many years. The tortilla, on the other hand, is made now exactly as it was made by the Mexican Indian when the Spanish found the country. The aborigine prepared his corn on a stone metate and made it into cakes by patting it with the hand, then cooked it on a hot stone before an open fire. It is still made in that manner in the heart of Mexico, and we could tell a story of how we saw this done one night in the midst of a dense tropical forest, while muleteers and mozas of a great caravan sat around their little camp-fires, whose fitful light served to intensify the weird appearance of the shadows of the Indians as they passed to and fro among their packs, but this is not the place for such stories.
Of the old Mexican restaurants, those of us who can look back to the days of a quarter of a century ago remember old Felipe and Maria, the Mexican couple who kept the little place in the alley back of the old county jail, off Broadway. Here one had to depend entirely upon sentiment, or rather sentimentality, to be pleased. The cooking was truly Mexican for it included the usual Mexican disregard for dirt. Chattering monkeys and parrots were hanging around the kitchen, peering into pots and fingering viands, and they served to attract attention from myriads of cockroaches that swarmed about the walls. One could go to this place just on the theory that one is willing to try anything once, but aside from its picturesque old couple, and its Dantesque appearance, it offered nothing to induce a return unless it was to entertain a friend.
Beneath the reminiscence is a working recipe for chiles rellenos as they were served at Luna's before the 1906 fire. The method is sound; a few of its terms and proportions need translating.
- The hinge: double-dippingThe peppers are dipped in batter, briefly into the fat, then dipped again and returned to fry through. That first flash sets a thin skin so the second coat has something to cling to, which helps keep the batter from sliding off a slippery roasted pepper. Batter slipping off is a common failure, and the double dip is one guard against it.
- Which peppers"Large bell peppers" is what the recipe specifies; poblanos, sold fresh in California as chiles pasilla, are the more usual choice today and carry more chile flavor. Either way, roast over a flame or under a broiler until the skin blisters black. The recipe then washes them in cold water to loosen the skin; steaming them covered for ten minutes does the same job.
- Dry Monterey cheeseAn aged, hard Monterey-style cheese meant for grating rather than melting, close to what is now sold as Dry Jack, though that name and its commercial production are usually dated to around the First World War, i.e. after this book. It grates like a young pecorino and does not run out of the pepper the way fresh Jack will. Ordinary Monterey Jack, queso Oaxaca or a mild cheddar all work if you accept a softer melt.
- The batterSix eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately then folded together with "a little flour," is a souffléed batter. Figure two to three tablespoons of flour total and a good pinch of salt; the original gives none. Beat the whites to soft peaks and fold in the yolks rather than stirring the two into one mass, or the lift disappears.
- Boiling lardFat hot enough to fry briskly, and deep enough to keep the peppers fully submerged as the text insists; the recipe gives no temperature. Any neutral frying fat behaves the same. The eggy batter browns fast, so work in small batches and let the fat recover between them.
- The seeds in the sauceThe recipe grinds the reserved pepper seeds with the onion and tomatoes (the coarse veins were removed and discarded earlier). They lend the sauce a faint bitterness. If you are using hot chiles rather than bells, the seeds will also bring some heat with them, so taste before committing them.
- Batter in the sauceTurning the leftover batter into the simmering tomato is a thickener — the egg cooks into fine threads over the twenty minutes. Stir it in off the boil and keep the sauce at a bare simmer, or it curdles into visible lumps.
- YieldSix eggs of batter and the sauce as given will coat and dress about six to eight stuffed peppers, enough for four as a main course. Sauce the rellenos just before serving; batter that sits in liquid goes soft within minutes.
Edwords is recording Luna's, the Mexican restaurant at Vallejo and Dupont in the old Latin Quarter, as it stood before the fire of 1906 — a fifty-cent table d'hôte where the family parlor doubled as the dining room. The dish name printed here, "chilis reinas," is most likely an English ear's version of chiles rellenos, stuffed chiles, rather than any reference to queens, though the garbling makes it hard to be certain; the author's confident claim that the name comes from Spain rather than Mexico is the sort of assertion this book makes often and supports rarely. The dish itself is generally traced to Puebla. What the passage documents best is the position of Mexican cooking in early twentieth-century San Francisco: acknowledged as the oldest layer of the city's food, patronized for atmosphere as much as flavor, and, by Edwords's own dismissive closing line, already thought to be in decline.