Customer Reviews

Mesa Mexicana

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Mary Sue Miliken and Susan Feniger are two of the top chefs in LA. Their "Border Grill" in Santa Monica (4th and Broadway) is a noisy, splashy, foodie haven with superb drinks, a decent wine/beer list, and amazing food. Mesa Mexicana offers recipes that one might easily see on Border Grill's menu. For those of us who grew up equating Mexican food with Tex-Mex, Miliken and Feniger's inventive take on traditional Mexican cuisine is a revelation.

As a cookbook, Mesa Mexicana is interesting, has an attractive layout, and, by the minimal standards of the genre, is well-written. One would not want to use it on an everyday basis. Many of the recipes involve a fairly intensive amount of prep work and/or require specialized ingredients. For the hobbyist chef with access to a decent Mexican grocer and time on his/her hands, however, it is an inspiring and provocative work. Highly recommended on that qualified basis.

I was impressed by the simplicity of these recipes. Unlike others I've tried, this book calls for simple ingredients that can easily be found at your local grocery store (even in rural Idaho). The authors walk you through the basics of making your own tortillas and salsas. You then can incorporate these into more complicated recipes. Above all... the food turns out delicious even in the hands of a novice.

I have made several recipes from this cookbook and have had loved them all. The salsas are now staples on my table as are the skirt steak, the flans (yum!) and the tortilla soup.

Many of the recipes appear on the menu at their restaurant, Border Grill. When prepared to specs, they taste just like the real thing. This makes me happy because Border Grill is one of my favorite restaurants.

Great Mexican cooking takes time, but as this cookbook shows us, it is not complicated. The book is beautiful, the recipes clear, and the results fabulous.

We love their restaurants and really love this book! The recipes are easy to follow and most are quite quick to make yet are complex in flavor. We particularly like their comments before each recipe that summarize the dish and make recommendations of other dishes that complement the flavors.

`Mesa Mexicana' and `too hot tamales' are the two books currently available from the chef / teaching / restauranteur team known as the `too hot tamales' of early Food Network fame, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. They recently went up against Bobby Flay on `Iron Chef America'. Not that it really matters, but I don't remember who won or what the secret ingredient was. What is important is that it was easily one of the most entertaining and memorable `Iron Chef America' episodes, comparable to the very first one featuring Chicago Mexican cuisine expert Rick Bayless and the competition featuring Oriental fusion master, Ming Tsai of `Blue Ginger'. What I do remember is the imprint of the iron on the back of Susan Feniger's blouse and the inventive recipe they did for Scotch eggs.

The first impression of both of these books is not inspiring. The layout is ordinary, leaning toward the garish. The photographs are in a grainy black and white and too small to easily make sense of what is happening, not to mention the fact that most are missing captions. In `too hot tamales', it is even difficult to tell which of these two delightful ladies is Mary Sue and which is Susan, from the lack of clear identification on the photographs. The flyleaf of `Mesa Mexicana' clears this up. Mary Sue is the taller with blond hair and Susan is the shorter with dark hair. They also neglect to give a good picture of co-author, Helene Siegel, whose voice seems to be strong in the prefaces and introductions.

Based on the strong `Iron Chef America' appearance, I decided to check out the books from this duo, even though their Food Network show was before my time. I figured two gals with this much energy and a strong showing against the indomitable Bobby must have something to say. At the outset, the book `too hot tamales' did not impress, until I got to the chapters on soups. At this point, the authors' observations seemed to come alive. This was not nearly as strong as what I saw in Deborah Madison's recent book on soups, but the comparison showed that Mary Sue and Susan clearly had something important to say. That is not to say that `too hot tamales' is the better book. `Mesa Mexicana' is actually the better of the two for anyone who is not familiar with Mexican cooking. Having determined that these books have something to say, the next big question is why get these books instead one from the heavy hitters of Mexican cuisine, Rick Bayless or Diana Kennedy.

For starters, both Bayless and Kennedy's best books are more strongly oriented toward teaching Mexican cooking, either by technique or by region. Milliken and Feniger's books are more for fun, without straying too far from strong roots in genuine Mexican cooking technique. If all you want are some good, snappy recipes without being tied to the grill (as you are with many of Bobby Flay's recipes), Milliken and Feniger may be your best choice. They are certainly your best choice if you are attracted to entertaining with a Mexican theme. I had an epiphany of insight when I realized that a rather large number of pages in both books, as well as many pages in many other cookbooks are dedicated to `starters', `finger food', `appetizers', `hors `d'ourves', `antipasto' and what have your. But if you live in a typical family, how much time do you really spend making `party food' in comparison to daily breakfasts, lunches, and suppers. Why don't cookbooks dedicate 20% of their books to breakfast and 35% of their books to brown bag food rather than giving so much room to entertaining food, which the average cook may make once a month, if they are inclined to entertain with food in the first place.

All this means is that these books are much more valuable to you if you do entertain often. This is especially true because both books are very reasonably priced, appropriate to their uninspired art work. It is also true because of the rather odd organization of the recipes. In both books, some chapters are organized by function or meal, some by style of cooking, and some by principle ingredient. This means neither book is especially good if you want to find a book to fit a particular function or to use a particular ingredient. The fact that both books are relatively short confirms that neither book may be very useful if you have room for only a very small cookbook collection. But if you can afford the money and space for a large cookbook collection, you will probably already have one or more volumes from Kennedy and Bayless, so why load yourself up with our spicy gals?

For most people, the answer is simply that they are great fun to read and their recipes get right to the point. If you are a foodie, you don't need another tutorial on technique. If you are a casual cook who entertains, you can go straight to the largely very concise recipes and get on with it. So, both books are easily worth the room they take up on your shelves.

As an aside, it is really interesting to see our gals' comments on the cooking talents of the Mexicans, which is very similar to Tony Bourdain's comments in `A Cook's Tour', where he states that almost all his line chefs at `Les Halle' are Mexican with practically no formal training, yet they are as capable as most French trained cooks.

If you really like cookbooks or you really like Mexican food, I recommend both of these books.

This book is "A" number 1! I have hundreds of cookbooks and feel that if you get one good recipe out of a cookbook you made a good purchase! Mesa Mexicana is wonderful because the recipes are authentic, easy to find ingredients, and the end result is fabulous! I've tried several and have made each again. If your a carnitas lover, try their recipe. The lard will frighten you, but in the end will delight you! On to the tamales!

15 years ago my boyfriend gave me this cookbook as a Valentine's Day present on our first Valentine's Day together. Needless to say I thought it was a bit presumptuous to give me a cookbook after just a few months together. However, after making the swordfish ceviche, I was completely sold. (By the way, we'll be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary in a few months!). It continues to be our favorite cookbook. The quinoa salad is our absolute favorite (and loved by our kids) and is what I bring to almost every potluck we go to. Invariably, everybody at the party wants the recipe. Every time I serve the clam and corn chowder for a dinner party, the guests ask for the name of the cookbook and many have gone and bought the book based on this wonderful soup! Cooking a Mesa Mexicana recipe does require a lot of chopping, but that's because every recipe is full of wonderful, fresh vegetables and chiles and you can definitely taste it in the resulting meal. The chopped salad is especially daunting (leave yourself plenty of time), but quite possibly the best salad I've ever had! I continue to try new recipes from this book, and, so far, have never been disappointed.

If you like fresh vegetables and chiles, salsas, salads, and wonderful soups, then this cookbook is a must-have.

Love, love, love this cookbook!!! As an avid cook (and a cookbook collection well into the hundreds), there are a few that are the "go-to" cookbooks, and this is one of them. When everyone has a hankering for Mexican cuisine, but I want to make something more than the basic stuff, this is my favorite. The recipes are easy to follow and not fussy and laden with a bunch of ingredients. There is plenty of room to improvise if you like to put your own spin on a recipe. It's a great cookbook if you are looking for something reasonably fast on a week night and that's a little different from what you may normally prepare.

The whole thing is illustrated in pen and ink, so you never have to worry if the food comes out like the picture or not. The pinto been looks like a bloated comma.