Mexican
cuisine is a style
of food that originated in Mexico.
Mexican
cuisine is known for its intense and varied flavors, colorful decoration, and
the variety of spices that it has. Mexican gastronomy, in terms of diversity of
appealing tastes and textures, is one of the richest in the world, rich in proteins,
vitamins, and minerals, though some people characterize it as greasy and excessively
spicy.
When Spanish
conquistadores arrived
in the Aztec capital
Tenochtitlan (on the ruins
of which Mexico City was built), they
found that the local people's diet consisted of corn-based dishes with herbs,
usually complemented with beans. Later on, the conquistadores added to
the indigenous foods of pre-Columbian Mexico (including
chocolate, maize, the tomato, and vanilla) the rice, beef, and wine
that they brought with them from Spain. The totopo (a deep-fried chip of
corn tortilla) may
have been created as part of this cuisine.
Most
of today's Mexican cuisine is based on Native American traditions,
including the Aztecs and Maya, combined with culinary trends
introduced by Spanish colonists. The famous quesadilla, for instance, is
a corn tortilla with cheese, beef, chicken, pork, etc. The indigenous part of
this and many other traditional foods is the chile pepper. Foods like
these tend to be very colorful because of the rich variety of vegetables (among
them red peppers, green peppers, chiles, broccoli, cauliflower, and radishes)
and meats in Mexian food.
Mexican
food varies by region, because of ethnic differences among the indigenous inhabitants
and because these different populations were influenced by the Spaniards in varying
degrees. The north of Mexico is known for its beef production and meat dishes; southeastern
Mexico, on the other hand, is known for its spicy vegetable and
chicken-based
dishes.
Mexican
cuisine has combined with the cuisine of the southwest United
States to form Tex-Mex cuisine.
Traditional
dishes
Foods
that are part of the Mexican culinary tradition include:
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