“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” ~ Proust
We all know what happened in 1492. Some Italian dude was commissioned by the Spanish Queen to sail around the world until he found Asia. His name was Christopher Columbus and he failed miserably, missing the Asian continent by several thousand miles and landing on some random island (Haiti) in the middle of the Caribbean – not a bad trade-off, if you ask me. Vasco de Gama took the trophy instead, reaching India in 1512 and helping Portugal become the first European power with naval access to Asia. This is what Charlie Sheen would refer to as “winning.”
Our friend Columbus wasn’t a complete failure, though. He still discovered something, and that something turned out to be pretty damn important. Ever hear of North and South America? What about the United States? Those things probably wouldn’t exist the way they do today if it weren’t for old Christopher’s epic fail. Maybe we should start waving the Spanish flag on the fourth of July. Kidding.
You’ve heard this “origins” story before, probably in a seventh-grade history class, so let’s examine what happened afterwards. It goes without saying that the Spaniards were pretty damn bitter about Portugal making sweet commercial love to China. They wanted a piece of the action, but all they had was this stupid continent in the middle of the Pacific with endless resources and weak, impressionable people. Wait a minute. Maybe we can use this worthless landmass, they said in their thick, Iberian accents. Columbus was totally on board (pun intended), eager to make a name for himself and prove to Vasco de Gama that he wasn’t a complete moron. He laid out his evil plans quite clearly in his journal, writing that “They [the indigenous] would make fine servants . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all, and make them do whatever we want.” Sounds kinky, Chris.
So for the next few decades, Columbus organized a series of expeditions to the “New World,” where he discovered new landscapes, new cultures, and new ways of life. He brought gifts from Spain (mostly diseases) to the indigenous peoples, and returned every so often to share the bounty of the New World (mostly women) with his Spanish compatriots. This colonization process, known as La Conquista, lasted several hundred years and witnessed a vast expansion of Spain’s empire, which at its height stretched from the tip of Argentina to the Canadian border. They lost it all within a few hundred years, but that’s a story for another day.
In between episodes of conquest, murder, rape, and pillage, those dirty Spaniards worked up a serious appetite. They were exposed to an array of new foods and cooking techniques in the New World, many of which were exported back to Spain and western Europe. Ever hear of a potato? It came from the Andes mountains and is easily one of the most important starches in European cuisine – without it there would be no french fries, “chips,” papas bravas, or gnocchi. Other Central and South American ingredients – tomatoes, chiles, peanuts – made their mark as well. So from a gastronomic perspective, Spain wasn’t the only nation involved in La Conquista. Many of the so-called “conquered” lands were, in fact, doing quite a bit of conquering themselves.
Today’s recipe is a tribute to the gastronomic volley that took place between Europe and the Americas during the age of colonization. Old World meets New World in an 8-ounce pour that combines classic ingredients from each region (orange & sherry from Spain, tequila & lime from Mexico). It’s a bit of a metaphor, a symbolic harmony of two formerly disparate cultures whose histories remain intrinsically connected – not only in the culinary arts, but in everything. The synthesis occurs in the best possible medium – a cocktail – to stoke the spirit of cultural celebration. So raise your glasses, my friends. Here’s to new flavors in old places (and vice versa).
Ingredients:
2 oz orange juice
2 oz Spanish sherry
1 oz Cointreau (or triple sec)
1 oz tequila
1 oz lime juice
1 tbsp egg white
ice
Directions: Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds and pour into a highball. Garnish with lime wedge. Bottoms up.
