Carnitas

I still remember being a little girl and listening to my mother tell us about when she lived in Japan as a young woman. She lived outside of Kyoto and taught English. I can remember the gold detailing of the kimono she had carefully saved, and grainy photographs of my mother posed by pagodas with solemn school children, but I can’t remember exactly the reason for her transoceanic move.

Was it to train for her black belt in karate in a proper dojo? An opportunity to figure out if she really wanted to teach school as her profession? Was she annoyed that after several years my eventual father hadn’t yet proposed? Could it have been an escape from the stinky hippies that had San Francisco in a death grip of patchouli and body odor in the ‘60s? Knowing my mother, I am guessing she doesn’t remember the exact reason herself, but the fact that it was an adventure was enough.
Tracing the elaborate calligraphy covering the album with my finger, I asked her a question. Interrupted mid-reverie, she looked at me blankly for a moment before responding airily: “Did I speak Japanese? No, but I bought a book and figured I’d learn on the boat ride there. Did I tell you I met the princess of Korea on the voyage over?”

I guess, years later, it’s not all together surprising that I didn’t give much thought to moving to Switzerland. I mean, for god’s sake, it’s just Europe, it’s hardly Timbuktu. Sure, I’d miss friends and family, but what with Skype, email, text messaging, Facebook, and a vow from my sister-in-law to stick my charming nephew in front of Google video chat on a regular basis, why not?

Do I speak French? No, I figured I would learn that on the plane ride over.
Six months into being an expatriate, I’ve thought of several things about the United States that it didn’t occur to me that I would miss until I ended up living in Geneva. Having a clothes dryer. Being able to go to the grocery stores, movies, or anywhere, really, on a Sunday. Being there for friends in trouble. Pandora. Being able to tell off irritating men on the bus, and be understood. Netflix. My nephew’s third birthday party. Mexican food: spicy, delicious, rrrrrrriquísima Mexican food.
Switzerland is so white bread, they don’t actually carry black beans here, just garbanzo frijoles . Their idea of a salsa picante is my idea of ketchup. En serio, mon ami.

It took months, but I did eventually get tired of fondue, and my solution to bland Swiss cuisine was to actually dust off my domestic skills (and to slather everything in copious amounts of hot sauce that my little sister kindly mailed me). This may shock many who knew me during residency when my culinary prowess extended largely to opening a bottle of wine and ordering takeout, but there was an earlier point in time when I attended cooking school in Thailand, perfected tiramisu recipes, and regularly threw elaborate dinner parties.

Finding decent Mexican food in Europe is no easy feat, but hey, with Obama as our president, I feel like anything is possible (still). I started my quest for the Holy Culinary Grail by asking long-time residents (no one is an actual native here) where I could go for good Mexican food. Ha! I laugh, now, at my naiveté. The fact that the best Mexican restaurant in Geneva has a French name (Le Chat Rouge) should tell you all you need to know. But, if an Obgyn residency taught me anything, it’s how to cope with adversity.

I used Google translate to find the French names of the ingredients needed to make carnitas according to the recipe I plannedgto sort-of-follow from Epicurious.com.
Remember what I said about black beans?
Well, that apparently holds true for cilantro, tomatillos, and tortillas. In all fairness, the local supermarket does offer El Paso-brand refried beans for a mere 5$ a can, but this had become an issue of conscience. Sí, se puede!

A trip to Bristol to visit long time friends and their adorable new baby fueled my efforts. Z, an expatriate and excellent cook, sympathized with my suffering. She pulled out recipe books and then innocently remarked that a new Mexican restaurant had opened in the Uni district: “Mission Burritos.” We were there next day at opening. To my amusement, they had directions for nervous British customers about how to eat a burrito. Wow, that’s just sad. Mission Burritos promised “Food from Mexico via San Francisco to the UK.” I’m not entirely sure their marketing campaign would pass a lie detector test, but at least their spicy salsa momentarily made my eyes water. Momentarily.

Bolstered by Z’s cookbooks and words of encouragement, I headed home to Geneva, determined to have a decent carnitas burrito on the Continent.
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should confess that I have always had a chef school trained brother available for an instant text, telephone, or in person consultation as the situation required. I like to pretend he enjoys my charmingly ignorant questions at random moments: “What exactly is searing anyways? Will anyone die if it’s not 160 degrees? What’s a substitute for coriander?” It’s his brotherly prerogative to grumble and lord it over me; it’s my sisterly privilege to ignore his annoyance.

No amount of shared DNA, however, would make a one a.m text message with a pork-related question charming. This time I was on my own.
I did my due diligence. Google research turned up an online Mexican grocer capable of delivering to Switzerland. I inadvertently bought 20 pounds of canned tomatillos. Bleepin’ metric system.

My office mate explained that the particular cut of pork needed for carnitas was not readily available in Switzerland, but that the Indonesian community, desiring the same cut for their satay, substituted epaule du porc.
The butcher must have been hard of hearing, because I had to repeat my request five times, before he finally understood me. “Je voudre acheter deux kilograms des epaule du porc.” I was aflame with embarrassment, holding up a long line, but I finally just pointed and held up two fingers. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in true Rodriguez form I decided to not just make carnitas, salsa verde, and my own refried beans but to throw a dinner party. I’ve always favored the cannonball approach.

At this point, word of my quest had spread, and the dinner party had begun to resemble a scavenger hunt. S. tracked down a bottle of tequila remarkable for not only its potency, but also the sombrero shaped lid it jauntily wore. Plantains were secured by another guest. Cilantro turned up in a French grocery store, just across the border from Switzerland.

And finally, there on aisle four, on a dusty shelf down in the bottom of the “Ethnic Aisle” the pièce de résistance - canned black beans. I half expected a beam of light to emanate from the heavens, illuminating the treasured haricot noir while a chorus of angels sang, but alas, the transaction was more prosaic than that.
So how did the meal turn out? If you drown anything in enough salsa verde and wash it down with tequila sporting a sombrero, it tastes pretty darn fine.