Desert Terroir by Gary Paul Nabhan

Author:Gary Paul Nabhan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2012-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Pan on a Mission

Capirotada Comes to Baja California

IT IS APPROXIMATELY 8,600 MILES from Oman on the Arabian Peninsula to Mulegé on the Baja California peninsula of Mexico. That is but one of many indicators that most folks would place Mulegé about as far away from direct Arab influences as they could imagine.

And yet, as seven of us passed through Mulegé a few hours after sunset—and just an hour after a brilliant comet lit up the skies to the west of us—I could not keep my thoughts from straying back to the Arabian Peninsula. Was there some way, I wondered, to trace some of the tastes of desert foods found here in the most remote reaches of Mexico to those found in the quintessential desert lands that were inhabited by my Arab ancestors? While not presuming that these flavors will come from exactly the same foods, are there not echoes of Arabian deserta found on the tables of Californios here on this bone-dry peninsula? And how different is the desert terroir of Arabia from that of Baja California anyway?

If I had spoken those questions aloud, my companions possibly would have declared me to be crazy (again), for their own thoughts were not even remotely oriented toward the Orient at that moment. The group’s conversation had turned from the comet that astonished us over the western skies near Santa Rosalia to the mules that we were to ride for the next seven days into the barrancas of the Sierra San Francisco. I was probably the only one thinking about riding camels, as if I were a spice merchant or one of the Magi meandering across the desert in pursuit of some elusive star.

When we came in from the coastal highway to purchase a few provisions in the sleepy oasis of Mulegé, I insisted that we check out a small roadside stand that offered fresh dates, date bread, and date-filled empanadas. As we got out of the van, we gazed at the full moon, framed by the feathery fronds of date palms—yes, the very same palm species cultivated in Arabia, roughly a third of the way around the planet.

Date palms are said to be one of the oldest plants cultivated anywhere in this world. The wild relatives of this domesticated date palm range from India and Iran, across the Middle East and North Africa, all the way to Morocco and the Canary Islands. But no one knows for sure where in the deserts of the Old World the date palm was first domesticated. Now, here it was, raising its iconic silhouette in the so-called New World, shaping the entire character of another desert oasis, offering to the Californios its trunks for posts and beams, its fronds for thatch, and its fruit for food.

Perhaps, I thought to myself as I paid for the date-stuff ed pastries with pesos, I am not as crazy as one might think: I was hearing echoes of Arabia in the palm fronds rustling above us in the night breeze.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.