Pass the Kosher Pizza Taco, Please

I have been writing about food ever since I was a Boy Scout. The boys made me an honorary Scout in return for writing in our small town Pennsylvania paper about the merit badges they had won cooking tin can bread and five-inch trout over rain-soaked campfires. Sure, I was a Girl Scout, too. Even then, I'd write about, and eat, almost anything. When my husband sent for me to join him in Phoenix in 1948, he led me directly to the taco, the tortilla, and refried beans. He had succumbed to Mexican food in three weeks (average time for initiates). I circled that plate like a dog around a porcupine. (That's a Pennsylvania ethnic food expression.) I ate it all.Before recovery, we were standing in line at the State Fairgrounds observing pit-style barbecue-a whole cow in there somewhere-served with beans. Not refried. Pintos, with rocks. Then, ojoy, to the Phoenix Indian School Open House to burn my finger and honey my lip with Fry Bread. Take two, one with honey, one with refried beans. Moonlight trail rides from such resorts as Jokake Inn and Ride'N'Rock found us saddled up and joggling along with richer dudes to stuff on mesquitebroiled steak, more pinto beans, and fragrant sourdough biscuits from another hole in the ground.

Sunning at a buffalo barbecue in Papago Park, with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys yodeling over a pit which held the falling-off-tender carcass of a real bison, we admitted it. We had found a home, and were entrapped by Phoenix ethnic food.

How could I learn more about this wonderful stuff? I took my maiden name for a by-line and ran with it to the nearest newspaper. I became what's known as a food writer. Corn. Chili, the ambrosia. Chilies, the pods. Cow...and beans. I thought when I conquered those basics, I'd have Phoenix ethnic food covered. It took a 1911 statement by Booker T. Washington to enlighten me. He wrote: "Phoenix seems to be a sort of melting pot for all the races of the earth. The tides of immigration from Europe and Asia and the North and South meet and intermingle in this city of 20,000. Everyone in Phoenix has come from somewhere else, except the Indians." He came to look at race problems and found few.

About the Indians. About 2000 в.С. Cochise man had primitive corn. About 1300, the Hohokam had dug about 185 miles of irrigation canals. And about 1680, the Indians were learning to deal with the marvelous bounty the Jesuit priest-explorer Father Kino provided: domestic animals, wheat, seeds of pear, mulberry, mustard, pepper, anise, cabbage, pomegranate, and lettuce. So what taste treats did Padre Kino get from the Indians? The late Anna Moore Shaw, a treasured Indian friend, wrote in A Pima Past: "Huge storage baskets were filled in winter with saguaro syrup, cholla fruit, caterpillars, mesquite cakes, parched corn, squash, and melon strips, as well as dried salt bush leaves for flavoring. Animal skin bags held jerky. There was honey, too." She also helped me understand why Mexican food is Indian-Mexican, not Spanish. The padres knew it well. Fray Pedro Font, chaplain with Juan Bautista de Anza, wrote in 1776 about Mexican farmers: "They plant with a stick, stopping about 10 A.M. for maize cereal, sweet with honey or hot with red pepper. With their fingers, they eat beans, tortillas, chilies, and tomatoes. The main meal is tortillas, beans, and salsa." The Spanish liked that as much as we do today. That mestizo diet, nutritionally sound, is your basic Number Three Especial Plate. According to Connie Brice, Mexican mother of five and University of Arizona extension service teacher, "The food at Mexican restaurants is getting more authentic all the time. It's interesting-Mexican food meets all the dietary guidelines of today. A little meat, lots of grain in tortillas, lots of fresh vegetables, chilies, and cheese. It took ten years to earn my degrees, and I see a lot of young people with identity problems. They have not kept up with traditions and language. In working with our Mexicans and Indians, Orientals, and East Indians, I find ethnic food brings people together." History bears her out except for the range wars. Sheep and cattle didn't do much to bring people together for 100 years. Then environmentalists, coyote lovers, subdividers, and vegetarians rallied all meat growers to a unified effort. Their aim now is to catch up with the milk cow. We lead the nation in per capita milk consumption, according to Bob Reidy, who rambles humorously daily by radio on "The Arizona Scene" for a trade association, United Dairymen of Arizona. "We had a dairy industry and a beef industry when the Pilgrims landed," he said. "And almost anyone who migrated to Phoenix brought a cow."

It was hay for those cows (and the cavalry horses at Fort McDowell) clever Jack Swilling had in mind when he cleared the old Hohokam canals for irrigation in 1867. Thus, the 1870s found Phoenix a community of adobes, half of the 500 citizens Mexican, with valley orchards and gardens blooming. The first icehouse was operating and immigration was up. A colorful settling in of Greeks, Chinese, Italians, Scots, Jews, Japanese, and Slavs were trading recipes. There were Chinese in Phoenix from its earliest days. Although there was discrimination here, they operated all of the restaurants in 1911, except for one owned by an American black. They also controlled most of the truck gardens. Dr. Pearl Tang and her thirdgeneration husband, Judge Tom Tang, recall that his grandmother had to learn Spanish to communicate here. When the Chinese proved to be thrifty and clannish, laws of exclusion and registration were enacted. For years, Chinese women were not allowed into this country or were held at Angel Island. Fortunately for all lovers of the marvelous Chinese cuisines we have in abundance in Phoenix, local Chinese pioneers persevered to become professional and mercantile leaders.

Penalized in a different way were the Japanese of Phoenix. By Executive Order 9066 in 1942, they were forcibly removed from their homes and were held in security camps at Poston and Sacaton until 1944. Tom Kadomoto, Japanese vice consul and a second generation Phoenician, observed most came back and went into what they knew best, agriculture and flower growing. Through the '40s and '50s, I never failed to go to the strawberryfields of Glendale for lugs of fresh, sweet berries. Their glorious flower gardens on Baseline Road are dwindling as the new generation moves on to computer technology and the arts.

Delia Edens Dorsch, who edited the First Families of Arizona Cook Book, clearly recalls growing up in Phoenix. Her father, Thomas Lee Edens, Sr., built the city's first library, the San Carlos and Westward Ho hotels, and the Fairgrounds bleachers. He was powered by his wife's wood range biscuits and milk gravy with meat and the elegant game dinners she prepared. Delia never forgot he came home once when it hailed, gathered the ice, and made ice cream on the spot.

Helen Stamatis Glitsos, a Greek first family pioneer, recalls, "My parents came from Greece and opened the Grand Cafe. I loved going there on Sunday after church." Brenda Mechler, Oft touted as the land of chili and beans and chili without beans, Phoenix may surprise you with its wonderful gamut of ethnicity. (LEFT) Traditional wafer-thin Hopi piki bread, in the making at the Heard Museum Indian Fair. (BELOW) Mexican burros delight the palate at the Friends of Mexican Art sale. Jerry Jacka photos whose family bought alfalfa acreage here in 1918, agreed the Grand was very posh. "And the gastronomic event at the Westward Ho was Sunday morning breakfast for one dollar."

Jewish and Italian hotel owners, liquor traders, and grocers opened places like Donofrio's Ice Cream Parlor (ninety percent of the businessmen ate lunch there in the '40s) and Cudia City.

The miners and stonemasons of Bisbee, Globe, and Jerome moved to town. One of our best Yugoslavian cooks, Rose Mofford, became Secretary of State, and Bessie Lipinski, whose blood lines trace back to Mary, Queen of Scotland, left Jerome and now heads the rapidly growing company called Bed and Breakfast in Arizona. The campy neon drive-ins that were here when we came are trendy plantfilled bistros. Ethnic food now is Chinese children eating tacos and Mexicans eating pizza and Italians scarfing up raisin bagels and Jewish kids slurping Gelato. The door to ethnic understanding can begin with the stomach.

Realizing the importance of ethnic friendship, Vivian Case of Valley National Bank Center's special programs, has two holiday shows a year, Inviting all ethnic clubs and groups to bring Easter eggs or Christmas tree trimmings and ethnic foods for a giant potluck get-together. Last year, more than forty countries were sharing food and customs. The "Hello, Phoenix" spring weekend festival is an offspring of Phoenix "Arts Coming Together."

More than sixty ethnic groups sell Cornish pastries, flautas, moo shu, crepes, strudel, scones, baklava, and Irish soda bread.

The last few years have taught us more about some ethnic foods than we want to know. The old days were bully when nobody had ever heard of plugged arteries or triglycerides.

Today, we are into Nouvelle Gourmet Ethnic. Eggs Benedict. Ratatouille on the Salt without the salt. The most elegant culinary dens in the country are opening here with chefs who must handle this burden.

Ethnic food may soon be doubled due to the fast-food operation. Asking Dorothy Tanita where to go for good Japanese food, she said cheerfully, "Oh, Tokyo Express is a neat little place." Her husband is a major Japanese grower-I I trust her.

And a few Sundays back at the Chinese Baptist Church of Phoenix, a cowboy-hatted member announced, "After the hayride tonight, we'll get together for barbecue beans, hot dogs, and baos." Baos is a delectable Chinese dumpling.

Saturday, April 28, 1984, nearly 1000 members of eighty-nine nations became citizens of this country at a giant gathering in Veterans Mem-orial Coliseum. Ethnic food gets another boost.

Currently, Thai food is setting new mouth-of-hell records previously held by chili and jalapeño foods. Having judged chili contests for years, I stoutly wait for Thai chili.