Nacho, nacho man

Imoved to Phnom Penh from Saigon for the nachos. Well, not entirely – but partly. It sounds absurd, but with ten thousand or so North American expats crowding the bars, pubs and hash houses of Ho Chi Minh City, there are only two that reliably offer the tasty little nubbin known as The Nacho.

Here in PP, though, I can nibble nachos daily. Nachos are necessary for all North Americans, as well as many of those who love or tolerate them. It’s hot out on the dusty streets. And as sure as night follows day, thirst follows heat. And beer follows thirst. And hunger follows beer. You see where I’m heading here? The wise innkeeper knows that the suds will continue to flow if the throat stays salty dry.

So just what is this dish called nachos? It is a bastard child conceived of the Mexican kitchen, adopted by the Tex-Mex kitchen, and embellished and beatified by the Cal-Mex kitchen. At its most elemental it is nothing more than a corn chip dressed with cheese, tarted up with salsa, and perhaps besmeared with frijoles refritos (a fried mash of pinto beans). It may be further cloaked with sour cream, bejeweled with jalapenos, enriched with meat, decked out with slices of olive and perfumed with cilantro. It can be either the temple virgin or the painted lady of Cal-Mex cuisine. At ballparks in the USA it is the neighborhood tramp. You will not find it in Mexico except where Americans and Canadians tend to loiter.

The nacho’s origin is largely unknown to the general population. Here’s the straight and skinny. It was in Texas in 1943 that a certain group of “ladies who lunch” went on a shopping trip to the Mexican town of Piedras Negras, just below the US/Mexico border. They decided to lunch at the Victory Club, where Senor Ignacio Anaya reigned over the kitchen. As with Caesar Cardini and the Caesar salad, he was short of goods at the time. So he cooked up some corn chips, slathered them with what he had, no doubt liberally lubricated the ladies with liquor, and served them his famine fare. The ladies loved it. Either they or he named the dish for Ignacio, but they used the diminutive: nacho.

The simplest formula for nachos is to pile corn chips on a platter, then cover them with salsa and grated cheese. The cook can add whatever else might be at hand. Trout fishermen just open a bag of chips, remove about a third of the volume, then pour in salsa, cheese, and whatever else, close the bag and shake the whole mess. At the other end of the spectrum, such as when the king comes to call, the cook might dress the nachos individually, so that they appear like canapes.

While there is much room for self expression in making nachos, it must be bore in mind that it is a simple dish. And simple things are unforgiving of mistakes. The easiest mistake with a simple dish is to use poorly chosen ingredients. People who make nachos with cheese-flavored Doritos need flogging. Mild cheese is a sin. Whole beans of any kind is simply beyond the pale. Spam is insane. And there is, here in PP, a popular purveyor of Mexican-like foodstuffs that uses chips made from flour rather than corn tortillas. I have no words for those miscreants.

The best nachos I’ve tasted in the Kingdom are those of the Cocina Cartel at #198 Street 19, right behind the Royal Palace. You can have them veggie style (which is not considered unflattering to their creator) or with grilled beef or roast pork. The roast pork version is a song in the mouth. The meat is fatly succulent, meltingly tender and salted to perfection. The chips are unadulterated corn. The salsa is tomato rich with a maestro’s balance of salt, sweet, tart and spice. Big slices of genuine pickled jalapeno pepper crown the composition. The only off-note is the garnish of lettuce chiffonade, which is as out of place as a harpsichord in a mariachi band. But brush that stuff off and you’ve got a fine dish of Ignacio Anaya. Good bye, Miss Saigon. Hello, Gorgeous.

Cocina Cartel, #198 Street 19