Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Its ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and Maya who domesticated maize, created the standard process of nixtamalization, and established their foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their cooking methods. These included: the Teotihuacanos, Toltec, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac, Mazatec, Mazahua, and Nahua. With the Mexica formation of the multi-ethnic Triple Alliance, culinary foodways became infused.
Tomato sauce can refer to many different sauces made primarily from tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish, rather than as a condiment. Tomato sauces are common for meat and vegetables, but they are perhaps best known as bases for sauces for Mexican salsas and Italian pasta dishes. Tomatoes have a rich flavor, high water content, soft flesh which breaks down easily, and the right composition to thicken into a sauce when stewed without the need for thickeners such as roux or masa. All of these qualities make them ideal for simple and appealing sauces.
An enchilada is a Mexican dish consisting of a corn tortilla rolled around a filling and covered with a savory sauce. Enchiladas can be filled with various ingredients, including meats, cheese, beans, potatoes, vegetables, or combinations. Enchilada sauces include chili-based sauces, such as salsa roja, various moles, tomatillo-based sauces, such as salsa verde, or cheese-based sauces, such as chile con queso.
In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsa, meaning salted. Possibly the oldest recorded European sauce is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Romans, while doubanjiang, the Chinese soy bean paste is mentioned in Rites of Zhou in the 3rd century BC.
Pico de gallo, also called salsa fresca, salsa bandera, and salsa cruda, is a type of salsa commonly used in Mexican cuisine. It is traditionally made from chopped tomato, onion, and serrano peppers, with salt, lime juice, and cilantro.
Costa Rican cuisine is known for being mostly mild, with high reliance on fruits and vegetables. Rice and black beans are a staple of most traditional Costa Rican meals, often served three times a day. Costa Rican fare is nutritionally well rounded, and nearly always cooked from scratch from fresh ingredients. Owing to the location of the country, tropical fruits and vegetables are readily available and included in the local cuisine.
Nachos are a Tex-Mex culinary dish consisting of tortilla chips or totopos covered with cheese or cheese sauce, as well as a variety of other toppings and garnishes, often including meats, vegetables, and condiments such as salsa, guacamole, or sour cream. At its most basic form, nachos may consist of merely chips covered with cheese, and served as an appetizer or snack, while other versions are substantial enough as a main course. The dish was created by, and named after, Mexican restaurateur Ignacio Anaya, who created it in 1943 for American customers at the Victory Club restaurant in Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
A dip or dip sauce is a common condiment for many types of food. Dips are used to add flavor or texture to a food, such as pita bread, dumplings, crackers, chopped raw vegetables, fruits, seafood, cubed pieces of meat and cheese, potato chips, tortilla chips, falafel, and sometimes even whole sandwiches in the case of jus. Unlike other sauces, instead of applying the sauce to the food, the food is typically placed or dipped into the sauce.
Salvadoran cuisine is a style of cooking derived from the nation of El Salvador. The indigenous foods consist of a mix of Amerindian cuisine from groups such as the Lenca, Pipil, Maya Poqomam, Maya Chʼortiʼ, Alaguilac and Cacaopera peoples. Many of the dishes are made with maize (corn). There is also heavy use of pork and seafood. European ingredients were incorporated after the Spanish conquest.
Chicharrón is a dish generally consisting of fried pork belly or fried pork rinds. Chicharrón may also be made from chicken, mutton, or beef.
New Mexican cuisine is the cuisine of the Southwestern US state of New Mexico. The region is primarily known for its fusion of Pueblo Native American cuisine with Hispano Spanish and Mexican cuisine originating in Nuevo México. This Southwestern culinary style is popular beyond the current boundaries of New Mexico, and is found throughout the old territories of Nuevo México and the New Mexico Territory, today the state of Arizona, parts of Texas, and the southern portions of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.
Chili sauce and chili paste are condiments prepared with chili peppers.
Honduran cuisine is a fusion of Mesoamerican, Spanish, Caribbean and African cuisines. There are also dishes from the Garifuna people. Coconut and coconut milk are featured in both sweet and savory dishes. Regional specialties include sopa de caracol, fried fish, tamales, carne asada and baleadas. Other popular dishes include meat roasted with chismol and carne asada, chicken with rice and corn, and fried fish with pickled onions and jalapeños. In the coastal areas and the Bay Islands, seafood and some meats are prepared in many ways, including with coconut milk. Among the soups the Hondurans enjoy are bean soup, mondongo soup, seafood soups and beef soups. Generally all of these soups are mixed with plantains, yuca, and cabbage, and served with corn tortillas.
Mexican street food, called antojitos, is prepared by street vendors and at small traditional markets in Mexico. Street foods include tacos, tamales, gorditas, quesadillas, empalmes, tostadas, chalupa, elote, tlayudas, cemita, pambazo, empanada, nachos, chilaquiles, fajita tortas, even hamburgers and hot dogs, as well as fresh fruits, vegetables, beverages and soups such as menudo, pozole and pancita. Most are available in the morning and the evening, as mid-afternoon is the time for the main formal meal of the day. Mexico has one of the most extensive street food cultures in Latin America, and Forbes named Mexico City as one of the foremost cities in the world in which to eat on the street.
Pace Foods is a producer of a variety of canned salsas located in Paris, Texas. The company was founded in 1947 by David Pace when he developed a recipe for a salsa he called "Picante sauce", which was "made with the freshest ingredients, harvested and hand-selected in peak season to achieve the best flavor and quality". It is now sold as "the Original Picante Sauce".
Oaxacan cuisine is a regional cuisine of Mexico, centered on the city of Oaxaca, the capital of the eponymous state located in southern Mexico. Oaxaca is one of Mexico's major gastronomic, historical, and gastro-historical centers whose cuisine is known internationally. Like the rest of Mexican cuisine, Oaxacan food is based on staples such as corn, beans and chile peppers, but there is a great variety of other ingredients and food preparations due to the influence of the state's varied geography and indigenous cultures. Corn and many beans were first cultivated in Oaxaca. Well known features of the cuisine include ingredients such as chocolate, Oaxaca cheese, mezcal and grasshoppers (chapulines) with dishes such as tlayudas, Oaxacan style tamales and seven notable varieties of mole sauce. The cuisine has been praised and promoted by food experts such as Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless and is part of the state's appeal for tourists.
Salsa roja is a type of spicy red sauce in Mexican cuisine. It is made of jitomate, ground with onion, garlic, chilli, salt and pepper to taste.
Sambal is an Indonesian chili sauce or paste, typically made from a mixture of a variety of chilli peppers with secondary ingredients such as shrimp paste, garlic, ginger, shallot, scallion, palm sugar, and lime juice. Sambal is an Indonesian loanword of Javanese origin. It originated from the culinary traditions of Indonesia and is also an integral part of the cuisines of Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Sri Lanka. It has also spread through overseas Indonesian populations to the Netherlands and Suriname.
