WhodunnitDinners Podcast #3 Tad Williams: angels, demons, donkeys and Jason Statham
Whether you’ve arrived at this blog post from our website - as a fan of murder mystery dinner parties - or landed as a reader of Tad Williams, the American Science Fiction writer, or indeed as a keen eater of burritos, you are welcome. This is a broad church and hopefully, by the time you’ve read a few paragraphs, all will become clear.
This blog is in fact a side dish to our delicious new Whodunnit Dinners podcast. In episode #3, Katie talks about ‘The Dirty Streets of Heaven,’ by Tad Williams, a genre-bending book which is an unusual combination of fantasy and murder mystery.
If you want to hear more about the angel Bobby Dollar and his quest to solve the mystery of why the souls of the dead are disappearing, check out the podcast. If, however, you want to learn more about burritos and what they have to do with the book, hang around here!
Tad Williams, the author, is a California-based literary superstar. The Dirty Streets of Heaven is primarily set in a fictionalised version of the San Francisco Bay Area. So when Katie was planning to talk about the book, she set me on a mission to introduce some food that might be based in the SF part of California. Initially, I was massively overwhelmed. There are so many different influences on modern Californian cuisine, I didn’t know where to start. Finally, I decided to pick something that truly had its origins in the area, and landed on… The Mission Burrito. Suitable for a food mission, I felt.
The origins of the Mission Burrito is something I talk about in more detail in the podcast (click here to listen) but in brief, the Mission Burrito got its name from the Mission district of San Francisco. The wider genre of burrito itself came from northern Mexico, as a kind of calorie rich, flavoursome labourers’ food that can be eaten in the hand, like the English cornish pasty. ‘Burrito’ comes from the Spanish for ‘little donkey’, who carried their packs in little rolled up bags and carpets, not dissimilar to the rolled and tightly packed burrito. Cute hey?
In fact, the Mission burrito is anything but cute; it is known to be particularly chunky and needs to be wrapped in foil to hold everything in.
If you’d like to recreate this type of little donkey for yourself at home….
I like this recipe from the Isle of Wight Meat company, partly because it’s from the UK, so it gives measurements in metric, rather than using ounces and cups etc, which I find problematic. It’s also super simple. It uses more spices than some other recipes, so I think the depth of flavour is impressive.
If you don’t mind American measurements (or are from the US!), this recipe from Mission Foods is pretty straightforward too, and there are lots of other great side dishes to try at the bottom of the page. I do prefer the black beans (nutritionally excellent for you) rather than the refried beans suggested in the first recipe as well. And it has fewer ingredients, which you may find helpful.
For veggies, substitute the minced beef for quorn mince. There is loads of flavour provided by everything else, so you’re not missing out.
If you feel inspired enough to buy a cook book, I recommend this one called Wrapped, which features our friend the little Mission donkey on the front, but will also take you on a culinary journey across the world, through Vietnamese rolls and Indian dosa to galettes from France.
Suppose you’ve found these recipe ideas suitably tantalising. In that case, you should take a listen to the full 30 minutes WhodunnitDinners podcast, which will introduce you to some more history of this San Fransiscan superfood. To hear the full Whodunnitdinners podcast - and to understand the reference to Jason Statham in the title - go here!