Happy Thanksgiving indeed! What’s really important here is what you’re having for dinner the day after Thanksgiving. You want Mexican food. You know it’s true. You’re tired of turkey and potatoes and all the weird side dishes that your family loves, like the shrimp-flavored craisin bread uncle Henry brings every year but almost nobody eats.
Yes, Mexican food. It’s on everyone’s menu. Those delicious beans with cheese, rice, tomatoes, and fresh avocadoes. That’s what you were thinking all along. My only suggestions have to do with how you prioritize the ingredients.
To serve the best Mexican food, you want lots of tortillas just hanging out there, available for whoever wants one. A great way to serve those is warm, delivered with a set of tongs, as if you’re handing out steamed towels at the spa.
You’ll also need refried beans, of course, by the gallon. Whether they’re totally vegetarian or infused with delicious, nutritious bacon grease is completely up to you. It’s a matter of personal style. Do, however, make sure you provide a lot of them. Without beans, the meal may only qualify as Southwestern food. To be authentic Mexican, it has to have beans.
The last essential item is sauce. While the Italians have their marinara, the Mexicans have their salsa. Not talking about the music here. It’s all about the food, and the salsa that belongs with Mexican food is a tomatoey sauce, not unlike marinara, but different in that it is usually a bit spicier and less pasty. When serving up Mexican food you should have no less than seven different types of salsa at varying degrees of hotness.
So the above are the essentials. The following though, are only if you want ‘em.
Rice is fantastic. It definitely rounds out a meal. Cooked right, it can seem like an essential part of the meal. Once you know that you already have grains in the tortillas, you’ll likely agree you don’t need more grains on your plate, so rice can stay or go, it doesn’t matter all that much.
Cheese, like rice, makes a meal even better, but it just isn’t integral. You can have a bean burrito, or you can have a bean and cheese burrito, but you can’t have a cheese burrito—that’s just a quesadilla. Quesadillas are the only food in which cheese is absolutely necessary. Narf! But aren’t quesadillas 100% Mexican? I ask myself. Okay, maybe cheese is an essential ingredient. I’ll let you decide.
Lettuce is great too, but it’s not essential, even in its role as a vegetable because the role of vegetables is fulfilled by the salsa tenfold. The only thing less necessary than lettuce would be corn chips.
Let me tell you about the corn chip. The corn chip is a tool. That’s all he is. He’s a tool for scooping, shoveling, or pushing the other food around. Eating the corn chip is as optional as Beano or cilantro. Serve up any of those three last items at your preference and your prerogative.
And, you know, it doesn’t hurt to be thankful the day after Thanksgiving. Estoy agradecido por la comida Mexicana.
Xenosthesia.com 