Spanish Lessons

For "Big Al"…

Oh, Mexico
I never really been but I’d sure like to go
Oh, Mexico
I guess I’ll have to go now
- from "Mexico" by James Taylor

This outing finds us leaving the moviehouse with an appetite for Mexican cuisine. Truth be told, the reason for this excursion is an appetite for knowledge. We appreciate learning as an ongoing hunger that should never be satisfied. For example, did you know that one of the fastest growing segments of Minnesota’s population is Hispanic? With that surge has come, not surprisingly, an increase in eateries offering Mexican and Southwestern dishes.

Editor’s Note: I lived in San Diego in the 1980s, during which time I forged an enduring friendship with a co-worker named Alvaro Buenrostro, a colorful individual respectfully addressed as "Big Al." The name Buenrostro, he would proudly point out, translates as "handsome face." I enjoyed a road trip with him to meet his south-of-the-border wife (he had a family in San Diego, as well). A couple of decades my senior, Alvaro passed away before I moved back to Minnesota from California, but I’ll always cherish his friendship. He always, if reluctantly, let me bum a cigarette from him, and he would occasionally share with me his delicious, slow-cooked, homemade burritos. Like many naïve Midwesterners, I would ask him what words like burrito and taco meant in English. And just what the heck is a nacho? The best response I got from Big Al was that burrito means "little burro."

It seems the old guy was right. The word "burrito" is possibly derived from the rolled wheat tortilla’s resemblance to the ears of a donkey or to a bedroll carried by donkeys. According to one fanciful account, during the Mexican Revolution, a man named Juan Mendez had the idea of keeping the food he sold warmer by wrapping it in a tortilla. People affectionately called his wares "burritos," for the little donkey that pulled his food cart.

"Taco" translates literally (and none too flatteringly) as "plug" or "wadding." The familiar u-shaped, hard-shelled corn tortilla version of the taco was first popularly described by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert (below) in her 1949 cookbook, published in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

According to most accounts, nachos were first created in 1943 by Ignacio (nicknamed "Nacho") Anaya in the city of Piedras Negras, in the state of Coahuila, Mexico. A number of wives of American soldiers stationed at Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass, Texas, which was just across the border from Piedras Negras, were on a shopping excursion when they arrived at a restaurant called the Victory Club. The establishment was closed, but Anaya, the maitre ’d, graciously cut tortillas into triangles, fried them, topped them with Wisconsin yellow cheese, put them under a broiler, then garnished the dish with sliced jalapeno peppers. One of the servicemen’s wives called it "Nacho’s Especiales."

It wasn’t long before the popularity of nachos spread across Texas. Nachos received national attention in the late 1970s when Howard Cosell sampled the snack during a "Monday Night Baseball" broadcast of a Texas Rangers game at Arlington Stadium.

October 21, 1995, was proclaimed International Day of the Nacho, and a bronze plaque was installed in Piedras Negras to honor Ignacio Anaya.

(Pictured below) Fried tortilla, yellow cheese, sliced jalapeno. So perfect in its simplicity. So delicious, even without shovel-loads of meat, lettuce, tomato, onions, sour cream and guacamole.

"Fajita," or "little belt," was a word used by butchers along the Texas-Mexico border to refer to the diaphragm muscle of a steer, a flavorful but tough cut of meat known familiarly in the U.S. as skirt steak. Hispanic ranch hands ate this beef folded in tortillas as early as the 1930s, but the word "fajita" did not appear in print until 1971.

As used in Mexico and Latin America, the word "enchilada," describing a rolled corn tortilla stuffed with meat and covered in a tomato and chili sauce, is the past participle of the Spanish "enchilar," meaning to season with chili pepper.

Speaking to the obvious, a tostada is a toasted wheat or corn tortilla, while "quesadilla" literally translates as "little cheesy thing." As for frijoles refritos, the traditional staple of Latin American cooking, commonly known as "refried beans," the beans are, in fact, fried only once. The prefix "re-" is commonly used in Mexican dialects to add an extra emphasis to words. "Refrito" is actually a reference to over-frying the bean paste until it is almost dry.

Which brings us to Fritos. In the early 1930s, one Elmer Doolin, of Highland Park Confectionary, was so impressed with a bag of deep-fried corn tortilla chips served with his lunch in San Antonio, Texas, that he paid $100 for the recipe, establishing the Frito Company in his mother’s kitchen. Doolin, with his mother and brother, produced ten pounds of the corn chips per hour. The snack, dubbed "Fritos," was initially sold in 5-cent bags, resulting in daily sales totals of $8 to $10, with an average profit of $2 per day. Within a year, the hourly output of Fritos increased tenfold to 100 pounds.

Production lines were soon operating in Houston and Dallas. Upon Doolin’s death in 1959, the Frito Company, with plants in 18 cities and employing over 3000, was producing over 40 different products, with sales in excess of $50 million.

(Below) With the help of the Frito Kid, Casa de Fritos was a fixture in Frontierland at Disneyland in the early 1960s.

By 1962, Fritos would be sold in 48 nations. Incidentally, the original ingredients for Fritos of whole corn, oil and salt, maintained through the decades, are still revered by vegans. (By the way, the name "Doritos," likely chosen to rhyme with Fritos, is Spanish, sort of, for "little bits of gold.")

The Frito Bandito (above) was introduced as the snack’s mascot in 1967, depicted in commercials by legendary animator Tex Avery as a mustached desperado wearing a sombrero and bullet-festooned bandoliers, brandishing pistols, voiced by the equally renowned Mel Blanc. In January 1971, the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee, in alliance with other advocacy groups, launched a $60 million lawsuit ($100 for each American of Mexican lineage) for "malicious defamation" of their ethnicity. The character of the Frito Bandito was summarily dropped in 1971, replaced first by "The Muncha Bunch" and, in the mid-1970s, by a W.C. Fields caricature called "W.C. Fritos."

Finally, a word or two about the popular relish and dip, guacamole, which comes from a combination of the Aztec word for avocado, "ahuacatl" (literally "testicle," describing its resemblance), and "molli" (sauce). Guacamole was first made by mashing avocado in a molcajete, a type of mortar and pestle (below left), and adding tomato and salt. Guacamole became a favorite among Spanish conquistadors. However, since avocados failed to thrive in Spain, guacamole remained an American food.

Speaking of conquistadors and Aztecs, tequila was first produced in the 16th century near the city of Tequila, in the central part of the future state of Jalisco, Mexico. The Aztec people had previously made a fermented brew from the succulent agave plant long before the Spanish arrived in 1521. Aztecs called the drink "octli," and later "pulque." When the conquistadors ran out of their own brandy, they started distilling this agave beverage to produce North America’s first indigenous distilled spirit.

Around 1600, Don Pedro Sanches de Tagle, the Marquis of Altamira (below left), regarded as the "Father of Tequila," began mass-producing tequila at the first factory in the territory of modern Jalisco. Don Cenobio Sauza, founder of Sauza Tequila, was the first to export the liquor to the U.S. His grandson, Javier Sauza (below right), gained international attention for insisting that "there cannot be tequila where there are no agaves!" His efforts led to the practice that real tequila can only come from the State of Jalisco.

In 1758, Jose Antonio de Cuervo (below) received a land grant in Jalisco from the King of Spain. He produced mezcal (an agave-based distilled liquor that is not tequila) in a small factory. His descendant, Jose Maria Guadalupe Cuervo, used the land to build a distillery for tequila production in 1795. In 1900, Jose Cuervo Labastida branded the tequila "Jose Cuervo." Currently owned by heirs of the Cuervo family, the brand has the highest sales of any tequila brand in the world.

Postscript: As for the favorite cocktail made from tequila, the margarita, there are at least a half dozen conflicting claims to its origin, dating from 1934 to 1948.

The world's largest margarita, "Big Rita" (above), looms 18 feet high and weighs 32 tons when filled with 7000 gallons of the tangy cocktail. That's enough for 44,800 20-oz. margaritas. With that thought in mind, we leave you with a toast to "Never stop learning!"