EuroLife: Day 192

Joy of Joys!

Anybody who spent any time with us over our recent US visit knows how badly we have missed Mexican food. We basically started eating salsa as we got off the plane and continued until they had to pry the salsa out of our hands and put us on the plane back to Germany. (This might be a slight exaggeration, but I assure you it is only a slight one.) I have tried, and tried, and tried to find a way to make Mexican food here, but I have been stymied at every turn! No amount of creativity can produce Mexican food without at least some of the following: cilantro, reasonably hot peppers, cheddar cheese, tortillas or tortilla chips. We had managed to track down the last two, but the rest--the really crucial ingredients--had proven themselves unattainable.

Until now.

It began in South Bend, actually, where I learned from friends that the Germans (and the British) call cilantro "coriander." (You can imagine my confusion, as we call something else "coriander.") I actually did see cilantro once during our first week here, but it was called "Mexican parsley"...and I never saw it again.

Anyway, a few days ago in Tegut (our grocery store) I saw a big table of fresh herbs for sale. As I had many a time, I set out to find cilantro. Part of the trouble is that the Germans just love parsley, and there are a few varieties and they dominate the herb-table. As cilantro aficionados know, cilantro looks just like parsley, so it blends in all too well. Fortunately, instead of looking for "mexicanische peterseille"or "cilantro", I now knew to look for "koriandar."And I found it. And I gasped, did a little dance, and started to look for more, grabbing pot after pot thinking that I would buy every available cilantro plant in the store. After settling down a bit, I decided to buy two and trust that the good people of Germany will surely not offer this just this one time and then take it away from me. (I sure hope I'm right about that.) So off I went, feeling as proud of those two plants as I've ever been of anything.

On the way home, I stopped by a little outdoor market looking, once more, for jalapenos. No luck there, but I did see a little package of short-ish, skinny red peppers. I asked the woman how hot they were and she gave me a funny look and said "hot...normal hot..." Despite the less-than helpful answer, I bought and practically skipped home to show Michael.

At this point, we were pretty delighted with our prospects. So delighted, even, that we decided to invite Timo (a friend) over for a genuine Mexican dinner on Sunday. We figured we could buy black beans (available, as we have learned, only at the local Chinese Imports store), tortillas (available at our grocery store if you look long enough), and some acceptable cheese like gouda and make black bean and rice quesadillas with our homemade salsa. Even if the peppers weren't hot enough, at least we had cilantro!

Then, this afternoon, things got even better than I could have hoped for. As I was making my way over to find some tortilla chips, I noticed a flash of orange. Dark orange squares, neatly arranged in a nicely packaged little line. Stamped proudly on the package was a British flag. "It can't be," I thought...but it was. Cheddar cheese. Real cheddar cheese! Now you have to understand, I have checked every cheese section of every grocery store in town. The best I could find was a grated cheese mix with 10% cheddar, and that's only at a very far away and otherwise uninteresting grocery store. But today, in a special section nowhere near the rest of the cheeses, I found cheddar. Words cannot express the hope I feel this evening as I rethink our Mexican food prospects for the coming years.

Two more things worth noting--and I know this is getting long! First, we have not yet tried them, but I think the peppers will be more than hot enough. They are unlabeled apart from a "Thailand" sticker, so I did some googling to try to find out just what it was that we had on our hands. (If anyone recognizes them, let me know what they are! I put the pen in the picture for perspective.) My best guess now is, not surprisingly, that they are "Thai peppers." If so, we are going to have to find some way to de-seed them without dying. They are incredibly hot; as in, jalapenos-don't-even-count-as-hot-compared-to-them hot. They are the reason that "mild" Thai food, at a good Thai restaurant, is never really mild. I'm hoping I'm wrong about this, and that there are a nice, jalapeno like pepper. We'll let you know.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that Mexican food will probably never play the role in our diets here that it did back in South Bend. Back then, beans & rice with salsa was a staple, either in quesadillas or just on a plate. They were cheap, delicious, and super easy. Here, in addition to the necessary ingredient scavenger hunt, it is decidedly NOT cheap. And it's not as easy, since we can only buy dried black beans. It was about 2 Euros for 8 slices of cheddar cheese. More strikingly, it was nearly 4 Euros for the tortillas. 4 Euros! For about 12 tortillas.

All that said, I am rather happy about our recent success. I hope this wasn't terribly boring for those of you who can just jet out for Mexican whenever you feel like it...but next time you do, think of us!