Tacos de Pescado con Agréments (or, ¿Did Couperin Visit the New World?)

Dear Colleague,

Tonight we had the simple fish taco. The finished product reminds me a of an air de cour, ornamented following Mersenne's guidelines in Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636-7). On the surface a taco is just a taco, and an air is just an air. Neither appears exceptionally complex but that is why both "compositions" provide such a satisfying result (when prepared properly).

The air de cour poetry will never be confused with Petrarch, Guarini, or Machaut. And shredded cabbage will never be anything but peasant food. But when you combine the air de cour poetry with the melodic line and seventeenth-century French harmonic vocabulary, the elements of performance practice, and my favorite performance element, rhetoric, each air can then touch your soul. The touch can resemble anything from a delicate caress of your cheek, to the searing pain of a boning knife jabbed right between your ribs en route to your heart.

The taco? The required elements:

• A homemade corn tortilla (I use a tortilla press, but, of course, a good quality, locally made tortilla purchased at a grocery store that sells primarily organic food will work just as well), 
• pan-roasted wild-caught true cod, 
• organic, refried black beans, 
• green, Napa, or Savoy cabbage (or, if you want some good color contrast, add some purple cabbage as well), 
• diced tomatoes, 
• scallions, 
• chopped cilantro, 
• lime wedges 

 And the essential elements, the rhetoric of the taco, so to say. My choices here reflect my personal taste and the philosophy of "think globally, buy locally."

• Lime-and-Chimayo-chile infused fat-free sour cream (one could use any chile powder from ancho, guajillo, to cayenne),
• either Rogue Creamery's Raw Milk Cheddar (Central Point, OR), or my favorite, Beecher's Flagship cheddar (Seattle, WA)
• queso cotija.

One could use just plain sour cream, or none at all, or any cheese, and have an ordinary eating experience. One could also just sing the words of the air just as they are, with no rhetorical inflections, no flexibility in the rhythms, and with nothing but the plain notes. In each case, what will you have? A list of ingredients that may or may not satisfy you.

As with most of the music we refer to as Baroque, the notes on the page are merely mnemonic devices; 50% of the music is the responsibility of the performer, who has to function in the manner of a composer-performer from the 17th and 18th centuries.

And as with any food we prepare for ourselves or others, the raw ingredients are just a point of departure. The beauty of the finished product comes from the way the ingredients are combined, supervised by the personal touch of the composer-performer. A chef is a chef; chef de cuisine or chef d'orchestre.

I remain,

ymh&os,

Quantzalcoatl