This Side of the Pond

In my last column, I addressed for you the many perils of being a British person who doesn’t have access to adequate cutlery.

This week, I wish to address another failing of my culture’s culinary talents. It’s a simple confession, but a sad one:

We’re bad at Mexican food.

Things have changed since I hopped the ocean, but growing up there wasn’t a decent taco to be found on the island. Throughout my childhood, there was a complete lack of takeout and restaurant options, so it was not a cuisine we were familiar enough with to even make it for ourselves.

The big cities of Britain have always been melting pots, and have always overflowed with culinary options from all four corners of the planet. On that basis, it might surprise you that one of the most delicious of them was missing almost entirely.

But then, we don’t live next door to Mexico.

Our “exotic” cuisines came initially from across the empire and from our European neighbors; we certainly seem to have developed a taste for it, because it only grew from there. Particularly on the streets of London and our other metropolitan centers, you’ll find everything from Jamaican jerk chicken to Italian pasta, Thai curry to sushi and tapas to falafel.

We have a special love for Indian food. A curry house is the direct analogy to a Mexican restaurant in the United States: a foreign cuisine so familiar and beloved that it might as well be part of our own heritage.

In 2016, in fact, it’s estimated that Britain boasted 12,000 curry houses with a combined total of 100,000 employees and annual combined sales of £4.2 billion.

Just as chow mein is a dish that was invented by Chinese immigrants on American soil, there are Indian dishes to be found on every takeout menu that were created with the British palate in mind. Chicken tikka masala, for instance, is widely believed to have first appeared in Glasgow, while balti (my personal favorite) came to being in Birmingham.

The same is true of Mexican-inspired food. It seems that fajitas were probably the invention of Mexican workers near the border in West Texas, while sopapillas come from New Mexico, chimichangas from Arizona and “mission-style” burritos are from San Francisco.

I explain all this to highlight the fact that I know my vindaloos from my korma and there’s not an Indian restaurant menu in the world that would succeed in daunting me, but I am still struggling with what’s what on a Mexican plate.

I find this upsetting. Since moving here, I have discovered just how many flavors I was missing for all those years.

To give you a picture of exactly how much flavor I was missing, I shall describe for you the “Mexican” meal my mother liked to serve. Please bear in mind that she is adventurous with her food and enjoys trying new things, so this was not a case of “toning down” something she thought might be too much for us to take.

Mum’s chili contained the following: a pound of ground beef, a bell pepper (no, I don’t know why either), an onion, a can of tomatoes and one can of kidney beans (completely drained). Yes, just the one. Also miscellaneous spices, I’m not sure exactly which.

The finished product was quite thick, as you might imagine, which made it perfect to serve with rice or a baked potato.

Again, I don’t know where this came from either. But I do know others in Britain who made it similarly, so she wasn’t the only person creating an abomination and pretending it’s what Mexico would do.

To this day, It has to be rice, or it doesn’t taste right. Even having discovered what real chili looks and tastes like, I can’t be doing with crackers or cornbread.

This makes my husband unhappy, but he has learned not to bother commenting. It might not be how we do things around here, but I am told that rice is perfectly acceptable in Mexico, so I’m not changing my ways.

He did, however, recently choose to comment on my complete lack of skill when it comes to burritos. I can’t fold them for the life of me.

At first, I just rolled them, then watched sadly as the contents slid out the end. I spied on others to figure out how to stop that from happening and realized you could tuck the end in to make a pocket.

I did not, however, work out that you could tuck both ends. Consequently, whenever I roll a burrito, there’s a gap along the top from which my refried beans will threaten to stage an escape.

This means I cannot turn it over so that gravity keeps the whole thing together. Instead, the flaps will slowly unfurl until it doesn’t look like I bothered rolling them in the first place.

As I did this for the umpteenth time over the weekend, I watched the husband out of the corner of my eye as he tried very hard not to say anything. He failed.

One eyebrow firmly affixed to the ceiling, he finally asked if I might like a knife to set on top of the “carefully folded whatever that is”.

I don’t know the difference between a taco and a fajita, I don’t really know what a chimichanga is and I’m not completely sure what a white chili is. I do know that, whatever it is, you can almost certainly put it in front of me and see it disappear.

I’m pleased to report that I might be the last British generation to lack a proper education on delicious cuisine, because a study performed by YouGov shows that things may be improving. Italian is now the most popular cuisine, followed by Chinese, our own and Indian, but next on the list is Mexican.

There may be hope for us yet – maybe the next generation will even know how to properly roll a burrito.

I’m going to keep eating my chili with rice though. It’s just not right without it.