Southwestern cooking includes New Mexico, Texas, and southern California. Its most salient characteristic is its entirely Spanish and Native American orientation, and, unlike parts of the South and New England, its utter imperviousness to the cooking of England and France. The chile sets this food in its own sphere. First grown in Mexico and Guatemala, the chile had an enormous impact on cooking all around the globe when Portuguese and Spanish traders first exported it. It had virtually no impact on American cooking north of the Mason-Dixon line or, for that matter, anywhere outside of Spanish colonial territory. But within the Spanish territories, chiles, in all their many forms and fires, reigned supreme. Other basic ingredients used in Southwestern cuisine are beans, hominy (called "samp" when made from white corn and "hulled corn" when made from yellow corn), corn and flour tortillas, pork, avocados, pine nuts, cilantro, limes, rice, and, in some regions, cheese. Red beans of the Southeast give way to wonderful black beans. New Mexicans are famous for their green chiles. Green chiles are allegedly (and empirically, if you ask me) addictive, and they have such a power over the palate that virtually no day or dish can escape their fresh and utterly unique flavor. Tostadas, tamales, tacos, burritos, and flautas, the common fare of Mexican restaurants, have equally strong roots in what is now American soil.