Not a big fan of cavatappi (or another recent popular trend in the US, bucatini), but I will allow no disrespecting of angel hair !
Interestingly, my first exposure to angel hair pasta was the not-particularly-great Mel Gibson/Kurt Russel/Michelle Pfeiffer film Tequila Sunrise that came out when I was in college in 1988. Gibson’s son is a huge fan of the angel hair pasta at Pfeiffer’s fancy Italian restaurant. A little while after I had a chance to order some at a restaurant and immediately loved that more delicate texture. For a little while I cooked with angel hair/capellini ALL the time, but it’s a bit delicate for some stuff so I eventually switched to a happy medium of spaghettini (thin spaghetti) for standard spaghetti sauces or on the far other end of the scale pappardelle for other stuff. I no longer like the texture of the regular gauge spaghetti I grew up with much in comparison. I mean, I’ll eat it - I just don’t prefer it.
In the SCA we had a transplant from NYC. There was a mexican food plac, where we got after practice dinner- and he asked 'what is a burr-it-toe?". We chuckled and explained, and he loved it. Late 70’s?
It’s since become my favorite hard seltzer (by a large margin — it’s so much better than White Claw etc.). But I thought it was just that one company’s name for their hard seltzer. Turns out it’s based after some sort of Texas cocktail?
When I was a kid, we moved from Los Angeles to Long Island. We were appalled at the lack of Mexican food there. Our first experience with a Mexican restaurant in NY was a ground beef burrito covered in marinara sauce. It was horrible. A few years later, around 1978, a Taco Bell opened on the Island and we were elated. None of my friends had any idea what a taco or burrito was.
Today, there are Mexican restaurants everywhere, many of them which seem pretty authentic.
Everywhere, by which I assume you mean everywhere in the U.S., is a little bit of an exaggeration. Vermont, Maine, and West Virginia have only a few Mexican restaurants, for instance, relative to their populations. You’d have to drive a little longer to get to one. In general, they are rarer east of the Mississippi river:
When a Taco Bell opened up in my medium Canadian city, our hypomanic Spanish teacher took us and made us order in Spanish, impressing the old Canadian women working there I’m sure.
Quisiera dos tacos con carne, un burrito y un vaso de New Coke, por favor…Y tambien unos Cinnamon Crunchies…
Could you order in English please? I don’t speak Spanish.
Mexican restaurants are less common in Canada than in the U.S. There are some regions with few of them. Interestingly, just recently I went to a science fiction convention where Silvia Moreno-Garcia was one of the guests of honor. She lived in Mexico until she graduated from college, at which point she moved to Canada to do a master’s degree. She has lived in Canada every since.
You can also often buy bulk grains, seeds, legumes, etc. from natural food stores, co-ops, some Whole Foods, etc. But “bulk” in this case can just mean “a dollar or two worth of some exotic ingredient you want to try without committing to”. You just dispense however much you want into a baggie.
Good Mexican places are usually hard to find in Canada outside cities. But any grocer has most of the ingredients, every pub mediocre nachoes (add $4 for meat and expect the whole bag of chips), and every gas station craptacular burritos and staples.
I feel like that’s only like 10% of whatever actually makes Mexican food Mexican… every time I try to make even a basic taco with those supposed same ingredients, it turns out into some nasty, bland “rice and bean rollup with semi-cooked veggie sprinkles”. It tastes like someone spilled insufficiently-microwaved Campbell’s soup onto a thin piece of bread.
I can spend $30 on the highest quality ingredients and still come nowhere close to that amazing $3 roach-coach taco so common all over LA. Between cooking skill, spices, various oils, the cooking grill/apparatus, animal stocks untold, family recipes, etc., I have never been successful at replicating anything remotely Mexican…
I mean, I’m not a great cook in general, but most things turn out at least edible when I follow a recipe. Not so with Mexican. That and good fried rice are the two things I have never been able to make well at home…
My Mexican friends and exes and their families, though, god, they can take like 4 ingredients and turn into the best meal I’ll have had in years.
I grew up in Connecticut and I also remember those tacos made with hard corn taco shells, jarred taco sauce and a packet of taco seasoning. The brands I remember were Old El Paso or Ortega and I think even then, these were basically “white people” tacos, meaning inauthentic. (They were good tasting, though.)
I agree. You can’t get the right ingredients at most grocery stores even in Southern California. Luckily, we have Mexican supermarkets like El Super and Vallarta where you will find ingredients that have never been seen on the shelves of a Vons or Ralphs.
These things get better with practice. Authentic things like queso fresco or cotija only go so far. I can make delicious Mexican food, but certainly not better than a good taco stand or truck. Things like cutting your own jalapeños are often not a substitute for the pickled ones. Roasting and grinding your own dry chiles is essential to many dishes. Things like huevos Mexicanos or rancheros are easier.
There is a place right nearby that does those street tacos. I can do a good quesodillo and a good bean burrito, but not tacos- well they are good, but not great.. But then again- I was born in SoCal and lived here most of my life (except for a couple decades in San Jose, which also has great Mexican food).
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