Origins of Mexican food?!
Origins of Mexican food?
Do these foods originate back to the Aztec or Mayan empires before Spanish conialization: tacos, burritos, enchaladas, chile con/sine (don't know the Spanish for without) carne/quesos, quesadillas, fajitas?
Answers:
Cortez wrote in one of his letters back to Spain that the indians in the New World ate their plates. He was actually looking at tortillas and did not know it. The tortillas come from the aztecs. Now, burritos are a new denomination for a flour tortilla filled different things. The aztecs did not have wheat. All tortillas were done with corn. The enchiladas, at least the original ones are tortillas dipped in boiling oils with a type of red chile which gives them the red color. That is also old although I do not know of what period. The quesadilla is a cheese taco by name. However, in Mexico City prinicpally they call quesadillas fried tacos filled with different things. The fajitas are actually american. It is just a name that sounds mexican and beef fajitas are actually skirt steak. In Mexico we call them arracheras.
Happy eating !!!!