Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food - Hardcover

Pilcher, Jeffrey M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199740062 ISBN 13: 9780199740062

Publisher: OUP USA, 2012

Synopsis

Planet Taco asks the question, "what is authentic Mexican food?" The burritos and taco shells that many people think of as Mexican were actually created in the United States, and Americanized foods have recently been carried around the world in tin cans and tourist restaurants. But the contemporary struggle between globalization and national sovereignty to determine the meaning of Mexican food is far from new. In fact, Mexican food was the product of globalization from the very beginning ― the Spanish conquest ― when European and Native American influences blended to forge the mestizo or mixed culture of Mexico.

The historic struggle between globalization and the nation continued in the nineteenth century, as Mexicans searching for a national cuisine were torn between nostalgic "Creole" Hispanic dishes of the past and French haute cuisine, the global food of the day. Indigenous foods, by contrast, were considered strictly déclassé. Yet another version of Mexican food was created in the U.S. Southwest by Mexican American cooks, including the "Chili Queens" of San Antonio and tamale vendors of Los Angeles.

When Mexican American dishes were appropriated by the fast food industry and carried around the world, Mexican elites rediscovered the indigenous roots of their national cuisine among the ancient Aztecs and the Maya. Even this Nueva Cocina Mexicana was a transnational phenomenon, called "New Southwestern" by chefs in the United States. Rivalries within this present-day gourmet movement recalled the nineteenth-century struggles between Creole, Native, and French foods.

Planet Taco also seeks to recover the history of people who have been ignored in the struggles to define authentic Mexican, especially those who are marginal to both nations: Indians and Mexican Americans.

About this title

Review:

Jeffrey Pilcher takes us through the many permutations of subsequent Mexican cuisine with a sure hand.

Planet Taco does more than trace the movement of a single food item through history and across continents. Rather, it tackles the growth, emergence and spread of an entire national cuisine. Jeffrey M. Pilcher ... uses the lowly taco as an emblem of the complex origins of Mexican food, its global expansion and its mutations. (Richard Wilk, Times Literary Supplement)

About the Author:

Jeffrey M. Pilcher first tasted Mexican food at the age of eighteen in Las Cruces, New Mexico. After recovering from the initial blast of salsa, he dedicated himself to studying the history and cuisine of Mexico. A professor of history at the University of Minnesota, he is the author of Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity, The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise and Meat in Mexico City, and Food in World History, and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Food History.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0199740062
• ISBN 13: 9780199740062
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320