Party for PEEC

Schedule

• Social time, cash bar
• Meal
• Poemas Verdes poetry reading
• Auction of Ssrvices offered by local naturalists and experts

Menu

Soups

• Watermelon Gazpacho
• Ajo Blanco

Tapas

• Snow Goose with chipotle and figs
• Lamb with mint
• Spiced Beef Picadillo
• Tortilla Española
• Pepinillos
• Citrus Salads
• Vegetable Empañadas
• Mojo de Cilantro
• Olives a la Sevillana

Entree

• Ensalada Mixta with Trout Escabeche

Desserts

• Chocolate Truffle Torte with Caramel Lime Sauce
• Fragrant Fruit Smoothies
• A Spanish Hacienda Cake

The Columbian Exchange and New Spain - The Menu

By Felicia Orth

Columbus' voyages to the New World on behalf of the Spanish crown brought about a transformative exchange of plants, animals and foods between the Americas and Europe. "New Spain" expanded northward from Mexico and Central America; eventually its northern area stretched from Texas to California. The 2010 Party for PEEC dinner focused on the foods in the Americas prior to Columbus' arrival, including maize, beans, tomatoes, chiles, squash, buffalo, turkey and trout. Columbus and the Spanish explorers took those foods back to the Old World where they were adopted - some more quickly than others, depending upon familiarity, ease of growing and preparation.

The 2011 Party for PEEC dinner will focus on the other side of the exchange the foods brought by Columbus and the Spanish to the Americas, which made their way to the kitchens of the southwestern United States. Prominent among these foods were meat (cattle, sheep, goats and pigs were introduced by the Spanish, along with horses); wheat, rye and barley; Mediterranean vegetables and fruits, including citrus fruits; and many spices. Given the historical interaction and adaptability of people and food products, several dishes will include a fusion of Old and New World ingredients.

Soup served at the beginning of a meal is a Spanish tradition. We'll start with gazpacho, an ancient Roman bread soup, which was subsequently influenced by the introduction of the New World tomatoes and green peppers. (Bread is now optional; tomatoes are not.) Other classic ingredients in this soup include cucumbers, onions, garlic, olive oil and parsley. Columbus brought the first cucumbers to the Americas, and they spread quickly; Native Americans were growing cucumbers across Northern America by the early fifteen hundreds. African slaves transported by the Spanish to the New World brought the watermelon we'll add to refresh this classic recipe. Cucumbers and melons are both part of a family of flowering plants, the extensive vine-crop family, which includes squash, pumpkin and gourds as distant relations.

Ajo blanco, another cold Spanish soup, includes wheat, almonds, garlic, olive oil, green apples and green grapes - all ingredients brought with the Spanish conquistadors and settlers. The Native Americans did enjoy some varieties of wild grapes and did have crab apples before the domestic apple and the green grape variety were established by emigrants. Andalusia in Spain has long been the world's principal region for olive oil production; the Spanish established olive tree orchards at Spanish missions in California in the 1700s. The Spanish Mission period is also when the Spanish transported almond trees to California.

Tapas are next, and will most clearly reflect the Columbian and Spanish influence on cuisine in the Americas. Dave Yeamans, a PEEC board member, is providing the snow goose for our tapas, which will be served with a chipotle-fig sauce. Chipotle, or smoked jalapeno, is a New World chile pepper; the Spanish brought figs to America, and in particular to missions in California, after success in Haiti and Mexico. Domesticated fowl first reached North America with Columbus' second voyage in 1493, although there is archeological evidence for egg consumption going back to the Neolithic age. The Tortilla Espanola, one of the most popular Spanish tapas, is essentially a potato omelet, fusing New World potatoes with Old World chicken eggs, onions and olive oil. (When the Spanish arrived in South America in 1537, they originally mistook potatoes for a kind of truffle, but eventually realized they were cheap, nutritious, traveled well and prevented scurvy.)

Other tapas will include lamb and beef, reflecting the livestock introduced by the Spanish to the Americas which dramatically changed the largely vegetarian diet of many of the native cultures. The Navajo sheep in the U.S. and the Criollo of Latin America are descended from the Merino sheep brought to the New World by Spanish explorers. Pepinillos are Spanish pickles - the cucumber is one of many cucurbits grown in the gardens of New Spain. Citrus salads and vegetable empanadas will show off the fruits and vegetables brought by Columbus and Cortez, including oranges and spinach. Columbus brought the seeds of bitter and sweet oranges, and lemon, lime and citron, from the Canary Islands of Spain to Haiti on his second voyage in 1493. Although New Mexico's climate is not optimal for citrus trees, early Spanish settlers in Florida began the large-scale production that goes on today. Coriander, which is delicious both as a seed and in leaf form as cilantro, will serve as a dipping sauce; spiced nuts and olives prepared Seville-style will round out the tapas bar. The olives brought to the New World by the Spanish came from trees that had been planted extensively by the Romans.

Following the soups and hearty tapas, an attractive green salad will serve as our entrée. Lettuce also reached the New World on Columbus' second voyage. Ensalada mixta is always colorful, and includes a mix of ingredients some may find surprising in a salad, such as fish! Often served with tuna in Spain, we will have trout, as a popular fish we know to be indigenous to New Mexico. Escabeche may be related to ceviche but is not raw fish. Escabeche is cooked first (we will steam, not fry) and then briefly marinated in a bit of olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper.

Our dinner will end a chocolate truffle torte served with caramel lime sauce, blending the universally popular cocoa of the New World with the tart citrus fruit of the Old World; fruit smoothies perfumed with orange blossom water, and a large cake which will be constructed to resemble a beautiful Spanish hacienda in Santa Fe - Sena Plaza.

Join us on May 1 for a tasty dinner. All meat (except the snow goose) and all produce will come from the Los Alamos Food Co-op. Recipes for all dishes will be provided, and perhaps, like me, you'll read them with new appreciation for the influence each culture had on the other's cuisine in the Columbian Exchange and in the society of "New Spain." Thomas Jefferson noted that the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its agriculture. The Pajarito Plateau in northern New Mexico continues to be blessed by foods of many origins.

Sources:

Gardens of New Spain - How Mediterranean Plants and Foods Changed America, William W. Dunmire

An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage

Chiles to Chocolate - Food the Americas Gave the World, Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell

A Mediterranean Feast, Clifford A. Wright

The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, Solomon H. Katz, Editor in Chief

The Oxford Companion to Food, edited by Tom Jaine

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith, Editor in Chief

Seeds of Change - Five Hundred Years Since Columbus, Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis

All of these books are available at Mesa Public Library; many thanks to Ruth McKee for her assistance.