Mexican Cookbooks

[Chris Amirault]

Aside from Bayless and Kennedy, I use one book more than any other: Reed Hearon's La Parilla: The Mexican Grill, which has a lot of great salsas and preparations. It's slim but useful, and his rice with mint is fantastic.

I also have Bruce Kraig and Dudley Nieto's Cuisines of Hidden Mexico, which is a companion book to a TV series. It's more ethnography than cookbook, but the regional Guerrero and Michoacan recipes are interesting to read.

I also got Zarela Martinez's Veracruz book as a remaindered title somewhere, but I haven't ever cooked anything out of it. Has anyone here?

[kalypso]

I also got Zarela Martinez's Veracruz book as a remaindered title somewhere, but I haven't ever cooked anything out of it. Has anyone here?

I've cooked from it pretty successfully.

I made the Mole de Xico. Having been to Xico, I purchased several local pastes to bring home and try side-by-side with mine. We liked the recipe from Zarela's book the best as it had the deepest flavor. Mole de Xico is typcially sweeter than most moles due to the fruit content, but not unpleasasntly so.

I think the thing that has surprised me most about Zarela's Veracruz is that the recipe don't sound like much when you read them, but the resulting dishes are all really good.

I think some of her recipes call for more oil than is necessary and I think some of her prep methods are a bit odd, but you can reduce the amount of oil and you can use prep methods suggest by Kennedy or Bayless and not affect the outcome of the dish.

I also own Zarela's cookbook on Oaxaca. I prefer the Veracruz book. That's just a personal preference. She does have a fun story in the Oaxaca book about making chocolate from scratch (i.e. cocoa beans) in the backyard of her New York home.

[nickrey]

Apart from a few Bayless and Kennedy books, a few favourites that I use regularly are:

Authentic Mexican Cooking, The Border Cookbook; Authentic Home Cooking of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, and a quirky little book that has some very good recipes called simply Mexican Cooking.

Edited August 19, 2010 by nickrey (log)

[janeer]

I am devoted to Kennedy's original Cuisines of Mexico, which I cooked my way through when it was first released in the 1970s, also like her Recipes of Regional Cooks of Mexico. Consider Bayless so-so. Quintana's Taste of Mexico is beautiful and good, and I love to look at Frida's Fiestas, have never really cooked from it, though. I have a lot of small local cooking pamphlets from Oaxaca, things with names like "Sabores de Soledad," that I make little things from that are unusual. Have lots and lots of Mexican cookbooks. Waiting for my pre-ordered copy of Kennedy's Oaxaca al Gusto. Want that Alquimias, too.

[Jaymes]

I am devoted to Kennedy's original Cuisines of Mexico, which I cooked my way through when it was first released in the 1970s

I agree that this book is probably the best all-around introduction to Mexican cuisine. I, too, bought it in the '70s, and it continues to be my number one reference.

A most wonderful book.

[Darienne]

Found this little goodie in our local Value Village today: Great Meals in Minutes: Mexican Menus, Time-Life, 1984. Contributing chefs include a VERY young Rick Bayless. VERY young. The cookbook is incredibly dated, written at a time when the quintessential ingredients which we count on using in Mexican foods today were not only not available in Canada, but obviously not available in the USA either.

Still I am looking forward to poring through the book for ideas.

Anyone else ever use this book?

Gosh, the summer of 1984 was our very first trip to the Southwest. Our first Mexican food. Wonderful! The rest is history.

[Chris Amirault]

Photos please! I have an early edition of Authentic Mexican andm on the dust jacket, Bayless looks like he hasn't started shaving.

[Genkinaonna]

I know that there's been another thread about this, but I just got "My Sweet Mexico." So excited to try out some traditional mexican baking. I want to jump right up and go to the mexican grocery store down the street, but have to wait for the rugrats' bedtime

[Darienne]

OK. Photos of Mexican Menus. Alas I have an old ailing camera and if it has a macro lens, I don't know how to use it properly.

Rick Bayless is the top right photo, lots of dark shaggy hair, mustache and beard, wearing a plaid shirt.

He provides 3 menus:

- Chicken Soup Tlalpeno, Cheese Empanadas, Green Bean Salad

- Tortilla Casserole, Pickled Cauliflower

- Black Bean Tostadas, Chicken in Escabeche

The recipes are far from his current authentic ones, calling for canned tomatoes, mild or hot 'chili' powder, 'vegetable' oil, sour cream, etc. I am not implying any adverse criticism here...the cookbook was a good start to getting folks interested in cooking Mexican food. Asking for crema or queso fresco or annatto seeds would not have led to a great readership at that time.

(don't know how to do a tilde in this venue)

Second edit: other contributors are: Jane Butel, Elizabeth Schneider, Sue Huffman, Barbara Hansen, Constantine Coules, Vickie Simms, Lucinda Hutson and Margaret Shakespeare.

Edited March 17, 2011 by Darienne (log)

[andiesenji]

These are old cookbooks that I have owned for a long time, certainly before Rick Bayless and prior to most of Diana Kennedy's cookbooks - her first was published in 1972 and I got The Mexican Stove– prior to The Cuisines of Mexico.

Good Food From Mexico was first published in 1958 and I got the paperback version in the early '60s and it has seen a lot of hard use.

Here's a sample of the index The Mexican names are in the body of the book, English in the index.

The Mexican Stove - What to Put On It and In It was written by Richard Condon and his daughter Wendy Bennett who lived in Mexico for several years. (He is also the author of The Manchurian Candidate, if the name seems familiar)

In both of these cookbooks, the recipes are simple enough that just about anyone can prepare them. When my kids were in their teens, they made recipes from both books (and left notes in the book about any substitutions they made).

I do have a lot of cookbooks with Mexican cuisine but I keep going back to these two because they are not huge tomes that take a lot of time to thumb through and there are no really difficult-to-find ingredients.

Edited March 17, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[Darienne]

Wonderful Andie. I just love old cookbooks. For any new Mexican dish, I first check in Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking. 1965.

I can't even remember where, when or why I bought it. I'd never been to Mexico...probably hadn't even tasted Mexican food then. Not one photo. It's a mystery. And now it's totally in pieces and nicely stained.

[Anonymous Modernist 17631]

i want to learn mexican food items so can anyone tell me which is is a good cook book for mexican food

[Anonymous Modernist 17704]

I would go with about any book by Rick Bayless. If you're not familiar with Chef Bayless, he's a James Beard Award winner and the winner of Top Chef Masters. His most recent book, "Frontera" is very heavily loaded with beverages. I would lean toward "Mexican Everyday" as a good starter, though I love all of his cookbooks.

Also, "Truly Mexican" by Roberto Santibanez is pretty fantastic too.

If you start with those, you can then determine if there is a particular regional type of Mexican cooking (e.g. Oaxican) or style (e.g. street food) that you'd like to learn more about.

[AAQuesada]

I saw recently that a new book about Mexican cooking is coming out that really looks interesting. I don't know anything about the author but maybe someone here does. 

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/12/01/363375295/mexican-chef-serves-up-an-authoritative-guide-to-her-countrys-cuisine

[IowaDee]

I bought this book to give as a Christmas gift.  It came wrapped in shrink wrap.  Now it will be all I can do not to tear off the wrap and open it.  For a week the book has been sitting on the table watching me and daring me to open it.  Just when I thought I had control of myself, you posted that link!   This must be how an addict feels trying to kick the habit and knowing a fix is within his reach!  Maybe if I throw a blanket over it???