Customer Reviews

The ¡Salpicón! Cookbook: Contemporary Mexican Cuisine

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First of all I can't believe that I'm the first one to comment since I personally can't stop referencing this book on a daily basis for something. Anyways, The Salpicon! Cookbook comes from the chef and sommelier of the fine Mexican restaurant Salpicon in Chicago Priscilla and Vincent Satkof ( Priscilla is a protege of famous Mexican chef Rick Bayless).

I found this book when I was looking for something to cook for my wife's birthday. One of her favorite dishes is the "pastel tres leches" 3 milks cake. So it was one of the recipes in the book and decided to buy it.

When I was done, I did not realize how simple it was to re-create. Later after 3 months I have pretty much recreated about 95% of the recipes. The other 5% I haven't found the correct ingredients.

Salpicon! offers more than just great Mexican cuisine. It offers you a window of possibilities that you never thought it could easily be matched. One of the recipes is mexican style gazpacho. Even though it's an European dish, it was given the Mexican treatment and worked well. Similar dishes are found thoughout the book and some of them will challenge your conventional wisdom of mexican food. But one thing is clear, they are all delicious. One thing that clearly distinguishes this book from the rest are the wines notes accompaning the recipes, even though i have a hard time getting a hold on some of the suggestions it's a nice touch. Buy this book, you won't regret it,

The way she approaches reinventing Mexican cuisine is utterly exhilarating. This ain't no TexMex book, oh goodness no. You should grab a copy of this and Latin Evolution by Jose Garces.... Get inspired and get Latin in the Kitchen.

The photos are beautiful, presentations are good, but the recipes are boring and lack creativity. I am a Mexican chef who cooks Baja cuisine, and i buy a lot of books some for the technical aspects of cooking, others for inspiration. This book lacks both. You won't find any interesting and new flavors here, no new ways of preparing Mexican food, what you will find is flavors and sauces used many years ago by avant garde Mexican chefs.

If you are looking to prepare a higher end quality than your basic Mexican food recipes, this is the book for you. I didn't like that it had so many seafood recipes (not a fan for seafood) but I will definetly try out other items, I have my eye on preparing some of the desserts.

For those people who are following the current trends in food, this is a great book to set some foundations for how to translate Mexican food from its humble and functional origins to haute cuisine. I would actually say these recipes border on the molecular gastronomy trends of Alinea, Fat Duck, etc. but do not use the chemical compounds. Instead they use the traditional ingredients, combined and arranged in unique and exciting ways. I look forward to working through this book and using the tools and ideas I develop from this to redevelop some of the Kennedy and Bayless recipes I adore.

One of my very first food memories is of the Mexican food that a friend of my mother's sent to her in cold New England all the way from Santa Fe. Those canned tamales certainly were nothing to write home about, but they were a rare treat in 1952, one that delighted my mother's heart and sparked a lifetime love of all food Mexican for me.

I bought The ¡Salpicón! Cookbook: Contemporary Mexican Cuisine several weeks ago for just a single recipe, the Pescado a la Veracruzana on page 102. Strongly reminiscent of one of my favorite Puerto Rican dishes, this is simply sublime. The salsas are wonderful, the sides dependably delicious and the dessert section, while not large, is enticing. If you are looking for inspiration, you'll find it here - and rest assured that if I ever again get to Chicago Salpicon will be my first stop for dinner.

In all honesty, though, there are only a few dishes here that I would make exactly as written. Many of the dishes (particularly the appetizers) are built around crab, shrimp and the like, foods that we cannot cook because of the allergies of one of our household members. There is an emphasis on duck, quail and veal, meats that only rarely grace my kitchen, and little in the way of beef. I rarely present a separate appetizer course (though these look just lovely) and hate waste. In my house the Papas Con Crema y Queso Anejo comes in squares rather than circles and when I want 2-inch tacos I either buy the bagged chips or make my own.

Do note that this book is titled "Contemporary Mexican Cuisine", not "Contemporary Mexican Cooking." This is high end food, not the street food more commonly seen in Mexican restaurants here in the US. And this is not a primer on Mexican cooking. For that look to Elena Zelayeta, Dianna Kennedy & Rick Bayless.