This is from a different restaurant from my previous entry.
We were told the food served here hails from the state of Jalisco, Mexico.
I ordered the Huevos con Chorizo, which means "Eggs with Chorizo". Chorizo is the name of a sausage meat that is Hispanic (in this case, from Mexico) in origin, which is pork meat made with fat, salt, peppers, cinnamon, achiote, and etc to give it a distinct flavor profile. It's "muy delicioso" or... very delicious.
The menu described my dish as "Chorizo scrambled with 2 eggs and served with a side of country potatoes, 3 homemade corn tortillas and salsa molcajete".
I also had myself a cup of Cafe de Olla with it, which is Mexican coffee that contains cinnamon, ginger, and sweetened with piloncillo.
Piloncillo is a Mexican sugar that can be found at many Hispanic grocery markets. It typically looks like this:
So where is Jalisco? And why is food from there so ubiquitous in America?
Many Americans actually aren't aware that, just like their country with many states, that Mexico is the same way. Here's a map of Mexico and its states. You see that Jalisco is shaded bright green, and is North of Michoacan, another state.
After a quick internet search to find out why Mexican food from Jalisco is so prominent in the United States, I didn't come back with any official reason. In fact, the best reason I found came from Chowhound comments from 2007... which as we all know is subjective, so we should really take it with a grain of salt.
According to Graig, the reason why Mexican food from Jalisco is so prominent in the United States is because it is heavily populated, but doesn't tell us more than that.
Another comment by Eat_Nopal, dives in further, explaining that Mexican diaspora into the United States was directed to those from Jalisco in the 1920's. Families from Jalisco would tell their friends and families to come over, and that would explain why the food is so prominent.
Pretty similar to the Chinese, how in San Francisco, a lot of the Chinese are Cantonese, because families from that region would send word back to their friends and family in China. Therefore, many from that particular region immigrated over.
We also have to recognize that when the United States was expanding to the West, that they took land from Mexico. I'm curious to know about the Mexican population that was left after that. However, that is a story for another time that should have proper in-depth research.
As for the regional differences in Mexican cuisine, I wasn't able to find a infochart, which would give us a nice quick view on the main dishes served in each region. However, we can refer to https://www.picos.net/the-seven-regions-of-mexican-cuisine/.
I think in another post, I shall dig in deeper on this topic too.
Can't wait to try more and different dishes!
Posted via foodiesunite.net
