Sopaipillas

More on food…



New Mexican cuisine is actually distinct from those of other regions, so much so that it actually rates a separate entry on Wikipedia. (It's on the web. It must be true…he said with a smile.)



Anyway, New Mexican cuisine is related to but distinct from the those of Northern Mexico, as well as "Mex-Tex" from the east and Arizonian and Californian stytles further west. Thus, New Mexican dishes are sometimes unique to the area (as, for example, in its use of the Green Chile in preference to all other chiles) or they prepare dishes in unique ways.



One food that New Mexico does share with much of the American Southwest, as well as parts of Latin America, is the sopaipilla. This is a kind of bread or pastry made from wheat flower. They are made by rolling out dough into a kind of triangle, folding it over, and then deep frying it.



When it is fried, it puffs up. It is warm and toast, and empty, a kind of brown, tender bubble of bread. You take it, still warm, and bite off one of the ends. Then you pour honey into the hot interior, and eat it…



Again, to die for.



Sopaipillas are sometimes served as desserts, but where and when I grew up, you ate them with the meal. Hot, fresh, brown, glowing…like a kind of edible luminaria.



My most intense memories of sopaipillas come from my childhood. When I was very young, my parents would take me to a restaurant down in old town. It was quiet and dim and huge…and very, very old…in an adobe building that dated back to earliest days of the city.



In the back wall of the restaurant there was a glassed-in booth. Inside the booth, a chef and a huge pot of oil. You could watch while he made the sopaipillas in a batches of dozen at a time. My father would pick me up and let me watch. The man behind the glass would smile.



It is one of my favorite memories. It dates from that moment in my youth…that moment I all our youths…when the world seems full of safety and promise, and sweet honey, and those around you are protective or at least indulgent…and miracles and wonders come fresh and hot.



And full of honey…





*



One other memory of sopaipillas. American cuisine is, today, much more diverse than it once was. At one time, and in some places, meat, potatoes, and white bread was as exotic as it got. (When I was a boy, I knew people who had never eaten in a Chinese restaurant.)



That day is (I hope) happily past. You probably had Green Chiles and sopaipillas for supper last night, and my long description of them is both unnecessary and boring.



But, not that long ago, 'twas another story entirely. A few decades past, in a certain Northern state, and I was a undergrad in search of a university, I was traveling and hungry and I went to a restaurant that advertised itself as "eclectic." It was expensive, and rather chic, and I really couldn't afford it. But, there were burritos on the menu and I was lonely, alone, and rather homesick. So, I counted up my pennies and figured What-The-Heck?



I went in and found that the burrito came with mixed vegetables. From a can. And the beef was ground chuck.



But the real jewel of the evening, the cherry on the top, was the sopaipillas. It was a cold night, wet, and I'd been dreaming of those sopaipillas…warm, and golden brown, and sweet with honey.



They didn't come with the meal but I knew they'd be dessert so I waited patiently. Finally, the waitress came by and said, "Are you familiar with sopaipillas?" Her tone indicated that of course I wasn't. That I was a rube and hick and kid and would never have tried something so exotic.



I assured her I was…my eagerness all too evident…and said that she should bring them on. I was ready.



"Here you are," she said, and produced a tin box, maybe twelve inches on a side, and decorated with New England motifs.



"What?"



"Your sopaipillas," she assured me.



I opened the box cautiously, as though it might contain live cobras.



Inside were little white things…biscuits, vaguely triangular, hard, cold as a stone.



"Sopaipillas," she said again, as I stared at them in horror and pain. Then, she hurried away to take something boiled and gray to the table across the room.



After a moment of grief, I nibbled at one. It was …bland. I later wondered if it had come from a factory, baked like a cookie, or whether they'd bought preprocessed dough …like the kind of that comes in tubes from Poppin' Fresh ("home cooked rolls"), rolled them out in triangles, and baked them up a few nights before. No longer hot, of course, and stiff as a board, but, Heck! No sense in wasting 'em.



I sighed. I shed a single tear. I paid my bill and exited into the stormy night.



There are some situations, as in Vietnam, when all you can do is get on the helicopter and leave…