Mexican Cuisine: An Insight

Mexican food is a style of food that originated in Mexico. Mexican cuisine is known for its intense and varied flavors, colorful decoration, and variety of spices. Mexican gastronomy is one of the richest in the world: both with respect to diverse and appealing tastes and textures; and in terms of proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Some people consider Mexican cuisine to be the second most varied and vast in the world (after Chinese cuisine).

When Spanish conquistadores arrived in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (the ancient city on which Mexico City was built), they found that the people's diet consisted largely of corn-based dishes with chiles and herbs, usually complemented with beans and squash. The conquistadores eventually combined their imported diet of rice, beef, pork, chicken, wine, garlic and onions with the indigenous foods of pre-Columbian Mexico, including chocolate, maize, tomato, vanilla, avocado, papaya, pineapple, chile pepper, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanut and turkey. The totopo (a salted corn tortilla cooked in a fire oven) may have been created as part of this cuisine.

Most of today's Mexican food is based on pre-hispanic traditions, including the Aztecs and Maya, combined with culinary trends introduced by Spanish colonists. Quesadillas, for example, are a flour or corn tortilla with cheese (often a Mexican-style soft farmer's cheese such as Queso Fresco), beef, chicken, pork, and so on. 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 are the chili peppers, green peppers, chilies, broccoli, cauliflower, and radishes) and meats in Mexican food. There is also a sprinkling of Caribbean influence in Mexican cuisine, particularly in some regional dishes from the states of Veracruz and Yucatán. The French occupation of Mexico also yielded some influences as well: the bolillo (pronounced bo-lee-yo, with the "o" as in "bore"), a Mexican take on the French roll, certainly seems to reflect this.

Mexican food varies by region, because of local climate and geography and 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. Seafood is commonly prepared in the state of Veracruz.