Once upon a time, there were only salt and pepper and cinnamon to spice up your food – that was it.
That was the extent of mom’s seasonings. Just the other day, while shopping in the ethnic foods section in a grocery store, it occurred to me, once again, how I’d had what you might call a “spice-deprived childhood.”
Now, I have a huge spice rack on my kitchen wall containing every spice and dried herb imaginable – from achiote seeds to Zanzibar nutmeg. Cooking – with lots of herbs and spices – has long been a favorite hobby.
Raised on a farm near Benson, mom was a very good cook who made endless variations of meat, potatoes and vegetables. Lots of cakes and cookies. Tasty casseroles. She was, however, an unadventurous cook. I think the only reason she had cinnamon was for the cinnamon-sugar toast we kids loved to eat with our morning cocoa and Cheerios.
Our meals were good but not exactly exciting. Our idea of a culinary thrill was to be able to eat at the OK Café, a Chinese restaurant in downtown St. Cloud. Italian food, to us, meant spaghetti, the only “ethnic” entrée that ever showed up on our plates. We’d never heard of pizza. But that was fine; we didn’t miss what we didn’t know.
Then, one day, my 10th-grade Spanish class took a field trip – to La Casa Coronado, a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis. The variety plate I was served (tacos, enchiladas, refried beans and rice) I can only describe as a palate-thrilling revelation. I had never eaten anything so good, and I hadn’t known such food existed. Fantastico! The earthy flavors, the spices, the almost-chewy texture of the tortillas that were a bit crisp on the edges, the peppery heat, the gooey melted cheese on the surface. It was an ecstatic experience never to be forgotten.
And I didn’t forget that meal. Oh, no! I have been in pursuit of that meal, or one as good, all of my life. After La Casa Coronado, I made up my mind to seek out foods of other cultures. I explored nooks and crannies of the supermarkets, always in search of “foreign” ingredients, new flavors, new textures, new spices. I checked out cookbooks from the library and tried various ethnic dishes, without much success, partly because I had to try to approximate the ingredients not available in St. Cloud.
I remember so well bringing “foreign” ingredients home, and mom casting a look of leery suspicion as I unloaded the grocery bag. You’d think I’d brought home a bag full of crazy little animals with contagious diseases.
“What in the world are those odd-looking things?” she asked.
“Corn tortillas,” I said. “I’m going to make tacos.”
I started making them, frying and folding the tortillas. She watched with a kind of dreadful fascination.
“Way too many spices!” she practically yelled. “We’re going to get sick.”
Rousing her courage, she nervously bit into a taco.
“Spicy!” she gasped, pausing. “But good! They’re so good! Make some more. But go easy on the spices.”
The tacos were also a hit with the rest of my family.
Much later, I was happy when Mexican and Vietnamese immigrants moved to Central Minnesota because that meant a cornucopia of foreign food ingredients in local markets: lemongrass, egg-roll wrappers, Oriental dipping sauces, cilantro, a wonderful array of chili peppers, mole sauce, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, tomatillos, pickled cactus and dozens of spices I’d never heard of. Oh, what fun it was to “play with” those foods, like a kid with new toys.
Aiming for perfection, for years I kept trying to make the best enchiladas, trying to recapture the magic of that phenomenal meal so long ago at La Casa Coronado. I didn’t even come close, although my enchiladas were tasty enough, delicious in their own way.
In the mid-1990s, I drove through Texas on a vacation: Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. I often joke I ate my way through Texas because that Tex-Mex food was so good I was constantly stopping at restaurants and truck stops to enjoy meal after meal. At some truck stop near Waco, I had a huge plate of huevos rancheros that was a revelation comparable to the supreme variety plate at La Casa Coronado 40 years earlier.
Four years ago, I came across a cookbook called The Tex-Mex Cookbook by Robb Walsh. It was then I had another revelation. That book’s recipe for spicy chili gravy as the basis for enchiladas was exactly what my homemade enchiladas had been missing for so many years. That same gravy is also out of this world with huevos rancheros. I’ve come a long way from the spice-less days of my youth.
Thanks to Walsh’s cookbook, to this day my favorite meal is a heaping platter of enchiladas with refried beans and Spanish rice. If anyone wants that chili gravy recipe, just email me at editor@thenewsleaders.com and I’ll be glad to send it, mi amigo.
