Note to Victoria Chang:

It is not boredom that prompts these ruminant micro-essays on comestibles, edibles, and tasty-ass grub. Nay, madam. It's love. Love for that which makes us strong, which comforts us, which makes us remember. That said, here's the latest installment.

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AR on FOOD: Chorizo

My younger brother and I like to say “chorizo” like the gringos do, with a soft “r,” the “z” pronounced as “z” rather than a hard “s,” and with the accent on the first syllable. Actually, I don’t know any gringos who accent the first syllable, but it sounds funny: “CHORE-ih-zo.” This odd pronunciation has something to do with our love for the Chicano gang flick, “Blood In, Blood Out” (screenplay by Chicano poet Jimmy Santiago Baca). In one scene, Paco Aguilar (played by a young pre-nose job Benjamin Bratt), drug cop, tries to negotiate a PCP deal with what is presumably a mother-daughter drug dealer team. The daughter asks Paco if he’s ever had a threesome, which really complicates my mother-daughter theory, and Paco spouts some stupid “I’m obviously a cop” platitude like “I never mix business and pleasure.” Mom drug dealer nudges Paco’s package with her pistol and Paco replies, “Cuidado con el chorizo. I might need it for later.” Paco doesn’t mispronounce the word, but when we quote the movie (you’d be surprised at how often “Blood In, Blood Out” quotes come in handy in the Real World) we like to say “CHORE-ih-zo” or (stay with me) “spicy Mexican sausage.” In our fraternal lingo, “chorizo” also means something like “spice” or “sizzle” or “moxie” or “talent” or “guts.” You’ve got some serious chorizo, ese. ¡Simón que si!

But I’ve said nothing about the food itself, which is, essentially, spicy Mexican sausage. It’s also a hard, dry-cured Spanish sausage that I’ve tasted only in tapas bars. This Spanish sausage is not the topic of this essay. Chorizo, in its most representative form, is a soft fatty mass, red with ground chile, and made of non-muscular animal products such as lymph nodes, salivary glands, and the like. Sometimes the organs come from a cow, sometimes a pig. I don’t usually differentiate; I just buy the brand with the most attractive package or the most stomach-turning ingredient label. I often imagine that it’s made in a factory that would give Upton Sinclair nightmares. As a child, it was a source of great delight on the playground: “Guess what I had for breakfast? Lymph nodes! And salivary glands! And beef cheek!”

Chorizo is not eaten alone. It’s used to flavor eggs, potatoes, and in my kitchen (though certainly not that of my mother or grandmother), sopa seca de fideos. Some of my earliest and happiest childhood memories involve eating chorizo-spiked soft fried potatoes wrapped in tortillas. Or chorizo scrambled into eggs, eaten for breakfast on Saturday morning in front of “The Smurfs” or the “Superfriends.” Often, I'd beg for a bit of coffee to drink with this favorite cartoon-watching breakfast. My father would usually oblige by mixing a few spoonfuls of his strong brew into my glass of milk. These days, when I’m visiting my folks, I’m usually able to coerce my mother into frying eggs or potatoes with chorizo, red chiles (ripe serranos from the garden), and sometimes cheese. If she fries eggs, I insist that she mix in crisp-fried corn tortillas. I’ve tried to make this dish, or use this method, at home, for myself, and it never quite tastes right. I often served some version of it to my then-girlfriend for breakfast (halcyon days of 2000), usually on the weekend, and it always tasted sublime. It must have something to do with the company one keeps. Chorizo is too festive, too invested with family history and childhood memory to be eaten alone.

It’s now possible to go to the local natural foods markets around here and buy fresh chorizo, which is also very good, but different. You see, the butchers here cut from a bit higher off the hog (or cow)—the result is a very good sausage with a very different texture—no hog maw or cowgut. My mother often stuffs the thanksgiving turkey with a cornbread-chorizo stuffing. The natural foods type is preferred for this dish. I’ll be doing Thanksgiving dinner this year; I’ll need mom’s recipe.