{"id":66,"date":"2015-11-20T11:13:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T16:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/thenewworld\/?page_id=66"},"modified":"2015-12-09T18:21:37","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T23:21:37","slug":"becoming-a-dish","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/thenewworld-wp\/becoming-a-dish\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming a Dish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u201cFood operates as one of the key cultural signs that structure people\u2019s identities and their concepts of others\u201d<\/em><br \/>\n\u2014 Chef Wenying Xu<\/p>\n<p>Although elementary, few understand the extensive significance of food and the cultural weight that can derive from the most simple dish. Americans, and especially New Yorkers, tend to take ethnical diversity in cuisine as a mainstream given. After all, everyone has at some point uttered the sentence \u2018Do you feel like having Chinese or Indian?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>But if one were to break away from the triviality of a given cuisine, one would discover that any dish, alone, touches upon religion, history, agriculture, economics, politics, and even psychology. We chose to tell you the specific story of nachos because it is a remarkable one (and also because it is impossible to dislike them). But bear in mind that, as nachos, any given dish tells a story of immigration, amalgamation and assimilation. Any dish can potentially tell you the story of people, their drives, movements and their becoming.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/148037785?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The origin of nachos remains a polemical subject. Many passionately contest its Mexican origins, arguing that it is primarily a Texan dish. Even if it is allegedly Texan, one cannot deny the important Mexican influence inherent in nachos, especially since its most credited inventor, Ignacio Araya, is Mexican. In addition to its creator, nachos are made with Tortillas chips, which undeniably originate from Mexico, but more specifically from the Totopo (the ancient tortilla chips). The Totopo itself is known as originating from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zapotec_peoples\">Zapotec<\/a> peoples of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Isthmus\">Isthmus<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tehuantepec\">Tehuantepec<\/a> region of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/States_of_Mexico\">Mexican state<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oaxaca\">Oaxaca<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As the legend goes, one evening in 1943 in the Mexican town of Piedras Negras (just across the boarder from Eagle Pass, Texas), Ignacio Araya, locally known as Nacho (a common Mexican nickname for Ignacio), invented nachos. Wether this invention was more of an improvisation is a question open to debate.<\/p>\n<p>During World War II, many wives of American military officers were based in Eagle Pass and it was a very common and entertaining practice for these ladies to venture over the Rio Grande on shopping (and possibly drinking) excursions. During one of such excursions a dozen women tired (or tipsy) got hungry and decided to go to the old Victory Club, which Anaya owned and ran. Although it was late and the club restaurant was closed, Anaya conceded to serving the officer\u2019s wives. Without his cook in sight, Araya panicked, took the ingredients available to him, and concocted what consisted according to <em>The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink<\/em>\u00a0of neat canap\u00e9s of corn tortilla chips, cheese, and jalape\u00f1o\u00a0peppers. He simply named it Nachos Especiales. The dish was a hit and gained considerable popularity in the region over the next 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>A little more than a decade later, Carmen Rocha, a simple but greatly charismatic waitress, gave Araya\u2019s dish precious notoriety by introducing it in California during the final years of Hollywood\u2019s golden age. In 1959, Rocha started working at El Cholo a landmark restaurant in Los Angeles and began treating her regular guests with one of her preferred snacks from back home, San Antonio, Texas. Jack Nicholson was noted to be a particular adept. The dish was just a snack from Carmen and didn\u2019t prefigure in the menu, but, again, quickly nachos gained popularity and became the restaurant\u2019s signature dish, subsequently taking over California, after Texas.<\/p>\n<p>However, nachos\u2019 true democratization as a national popular dish owes much to Frank Liberto, who began to sell them as stadium food at Arlington Stadium (home of baseball\u2019s Texas Rangers at the time) in the 1970s. Liberto made one major tweak by substituting real cheese (and its limited shelf life) for a concocted industrial version involving melted cheese and other secret ingredients. The new sauce didn\u2019t need to be heated, and, when it came to shelf life, could most probably survive a nuclear blast.<\/p>\n<p>Today you can find nachos in both Tex-Mex and Mexican restaurants, as well as in sports bars, movie theaters, gas stations\u2026 They are considered both homey and exotic, and are unanimously appreciated by all cultures and generations, for better or worse.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"tl-timeline-iframe\" style=\"border-width: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tiki-toki.com\/timeline\/embed\/569626\/1384051274\/\" width=\"900\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\nif (window.postMessage) { var tlMouseupFunc = function() { var tlFrame = document.getElementById(\"tl-timeline-iframe\"); if (tlFrame.contentWindow &#038;&#038; tlFrame.contentWindow.postMessage) { tlFrame.contentWindow.postMessage(\"mouseup\",\"*\"); } } if (typeof window.addEventListener != \"undefined\") { window.addEventListener(\"mouseup\", tlMouseupFunc, false); } else if (typeof window.attachEvent != \"undefined\") { window.attachEvent(\"onmouseup\", tlMouseupFunc); } }\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cFood operates as one of the key cultural signs that structure people\u2019s identities and their concepts of others\u201d \u2014 Chef Wenying Xu Although elementary, few understand the extensive significance of food and the cultural weight that can derive from the most simple dish. Americans, and especially New Yorkers, tend to take ethnical diversity in cuisine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Becoming a Dish - The New World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/thenewworld-wp\/becoming-a-dish\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Becoming a Dish - The New World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cFood operates as one of the key cultural signs that structure people\u2019s identities and their concepts of others\u201d \u2014 Chef Wenying Xu Although elementary, few understand the extensive significance of food and the cultural weight that can derive from the most simple dish. 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