South west region cuisine (Arizona, Utah, Texas etc) Essay

South west region cuisine (Arizona, Utah, Texas etc) - Essay Example The American historical regional cuisine is still very much alive today, and it is what differentiates different regions. The South West region is characterized by rustic cooking, comprising of a fusion of various ingredients and diets that could have been eaten by the native Mexicans and the colonial settlers from Spain (Olver, 2014). Therefore, the characteristic cuisine of the South west region is the Mexican food, mainly characterized by the use of large chunks of meats, with beans as the accompaniments and chili pepper as the main spice (White, 1993). Thus, the combination of the large chunks of meat, beans and chili pepper making a thick soup, serves as a characteristic South west region cuisine, which is very popular even nationally and abroad. Nevertheless, even within the South west region, the preferred cuisines do vary, with the regions of Utah, New Mexico and Colorado being popular for the New Mexican cuisine, which is basically the Chili soup, while Texas has a fusion of the New Mexican cuisine with its own ingredients, to form the cuisine referred to as Tex-Mex while Arizona has its own p opular cuisine referred as Sonoran (Olver, 2014). The Tex-Mex is unique, notably because of the use of Sour cream, which is a basic ingredient used both as an ingredient in cooking and as a cooling garnish. Therefore, the Tex-Mex cuisine comprises of the large amount of meat, cumin, cheese and the characteristic sour cream (Detterick-Pineda, 2004). The Tex-Mex is a fusion cuisine from different regions, which has combined the characteristic large chunks of meat with cheese and the sour cream being a German influence, to deliver a unique cuisine to the State, which continues to evolve even to date. On the other hand, the Cali-Mex is a cuisine popular in the South west region coastal State of California (White, 1993). The state is one bordering Mexico, and