Louie, another kind of salad native to San Francisco. Favorite grains are mainly wheat, and the region is known for sourdough bread. Cheeses of the region include Humboldt Fog, Cougar Gold and Teleme. Southwest and Southern California The states of the Four Corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) plus Nevada, Southern California, and West Texas make up a large chunk of the United States. There is a distinct Hispanic accent to the cookery here, with each having cultural capitals in Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Santa Fe, San Diego, and Tucson. For centuries, prior to California's statehood in the 1850s, it was part of the Spanish Empire, namely Alta California (modern California), Santa Fe de Nuevo México (modern New Mexico), and Tejas (modern Texas). Today it is home of a large population of Native Americans, Hispanos, descendants of the American frontier, Asian Americans, and immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. California, New Mexico, and Texas continue to hold their unique identities which is reflected in their distinct regional cuisines, the multiple cuisines of California, New Mexican cuisine, Texan cuisine, and Tex-Mex. Spanish is a commonly spoken secondary language here; the state of New Mexico has its own distinct dialect. With the exception of Southern California, the signature meat is beef, since this is one of the two regions in which cowboys lived and modern cattle ranchers still eke out their living today. High-quality beefstock is a feature that has been present in the region for more than 200 years and the many cuts of beef are unique to the United States. These cuts of meat are different from the related Mexican cuisine over the border in that certain kind of offal, like lengua (tongue) cabeza (head) and tripas (tripe) are considered less desirable and are thus less emphasized. Typical cuts would include the ribs, brisket, sirloin, flank steak, skirt steak, and t-bone. Historically, Spanish settlers that came to the region found it completely unsuitable to the mining operations that much older settlements in Mexico had to offer as their technology was not advanced enough to extract the silver that would later be found. They had no knowledge of the gold in California, which wouldn't be found until 1848, and knew even less about the silver in Nevada, undiscovered until after the Civil War. Instead, in order to make the pueblos prosper, they adapted the old rancho system