Book of Days Tales

I have been posting on this blog for exactly one year now, and, thus, have the makings of a book which I am flogging around presses. Thank you for being on this part of my foodie journey. For the coming year I am going to switch to movable feasts (pchum ben, Easter, etc.) and see what happens. Posts may not be daily. Meanwhile . . .

On this date in 1776 Mission San Francisco de Asís, or Mission Dolores, the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco and the sixth religious settlement established as part of the California chain of missions, was founded by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Father Francisco Palóu, both members of the de Anza Expedition, which had been charged with bringing Spanish settlers to Alta (upper) California, and evangelizing the indigenous Ohlone. The settlement was named for St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order, but was also commonly known as “Mission Dolores” because of a nearby creek named Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (“Our Lady of Sorrows Creek”).

For a recipe I will go with the San Francisco mission burrito, a treat that has spread over much of the U.S. My favorite food writer, Calvin Trillin, said that the mission burrito “has been refined and embellished in much the same way that the pizza has been refined and embellished in Chicago.” You might want to be careful in New York or Naples with remarks like that Calvin. But he is right about the mission burrito. Cook’s choice here. Start with a large flour tortilla, Spanish rice, and refried beans. Then you have a choice of ingredients – stewed or grilled chicken (pollo or pollo asado), grilled beef steak (carne asada), barbecued pork (al pastor) and braised shredded pork (carnitas). Or you can try pork stewed in green chile sauce (chile verde – my absolute fav), beef stewed in red chile sauce (chile colorado), Mexican sausage (chorizo), beef tongue (lengua), stewed and shredded beef (machaca), stewed beef head (cabeza), beef brain (sesos), beef eyeball (ojo), and shrimp (camarones). Or why not try birria (goat meat), camarones diablos (extra-spicy shrimp), carne deshebrada (shredded beef with red chile sauce), carne molida (ground beef), chicharrónes (fried pork rinds, stewed), barbacoa (marinated lamb), pescado (fish, usually fried or grilled tilapia and sometimes salmon), picadillo (ground beef with chopped chiles and tomatoes), mole (chicken stewed in a chile and chocolate sauce), nopales (prickly pear cactus), and tripas (beef tripe). You get your choice of salsa too. I’d go with pico de gallo, heavy on the chiles. OK – now I am hungry.