Customer Reviews

A Taste of Mexico: Vegetarian Cuisine (Healthy World Cuisine)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

During our last trip to Mexico my wife and I ate in the author's San Cristobal restaurant, La Casa del Pan. We are not vegetarians, but we do try to eat meatless meals fairly frequently. We loved the food and immediately bought several copies of the cookbook to share with friends. We also enjoyed meeting the owner/author, who is a musician as well, and frequently hosts informal musical evenings at the restaurant.

Few Mexicans are vegetarian (at least not by choice--sadly many Mexicans can seldom afford to eat meat) and most Mexican cookbooks are heavily meat-oriented, even though many recipes are easily adapted to meatless cooking. Mexican cooking can also be high in fat, although the heavy dishes Americans often think of are NOT the everyday fare for most Mexicans, but are instead special occasion dishes.

Nigh's cookbook gives wonderful meat-free takes on some traditional recipes, and also includes innovative Mexican-influenced creations of her own.

Some recipes are vegan, or could easily be made so, but many include milk products and/or eggs. While a few recipes in this book are definitely not for those on a low-fat diet, most are very healthful.

Although it makes not pretend to be a historical treatise, the book does contain interesting historical information about Mexican ingredients and culinary history, including commentary on such things as amaranth, which was banned by the Spanish conquerors because it had religious significance to the Aztecs.

The recipes are clear and easy to follow. Every recipe I have tried has turned out very well. I have found the salad and dessert sections especially interesting, but the soups and main courses are quite fine, too.

My only complaint is that the book is so short. I would love more recipes like this. However, given the book's modest price, I think it is an excellent investment for anyone interesting in Mexican cooking, whether they are vegetarian or not.

I bought this book in San Cristobal during a backpacking trip through Mexico a number of years ago. Thinking what an unusual and serendipitous find this was - authentic southern Mexican dishes retooled for the vegetarian - I was excited to get it home and sample some of the recipes.

I've been consistently impressed with the book and the dishes made from it since. Thankfully, Kippy Nigh provides a detailed listing of Mexican ingredients and techniques as primer for the non-Mexican cook, who has most likely never tasted let alone attempted to prepare authentic Mexican cuisine. In "A Taste of Mexico" you'll find recipes for typical market food such as quesadillas filled with unusual but delicious ingredients such as huitlacoche or fleur de calabasa (which I became addicted to while traveling), chilaquiles, chayotes, empanadas, and horchata, as well as more familiar favorites.

Much of the book focuses on recipes that don't traditionally call for meat such as vegetable soups, appetizers, salads, beans, and accompaniments. However, many main dishes are modified by replacing the meat with TVP, a soy product that does a reasonable job replicating the taste and texture of ground meat, as in the case of her enchilada, chile relleno and tostada recipes. When I've made these dishes for non-vegetarian friends they're always surprised that they don't contain meat.

This is definitely a book I recommend to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.

I felt that most mexican food just dealt with burritos and tacos. This book has introduce me to different variety of foods, so far my favorites are vegetarian tamales and black bean soup. Most recipes are not low fat, which can be adjusted, the directions are easy to read but some of them lack a few steps. As a beginner mexican cook, I've begun to appreciate the variety of uses of peppers and chiles both fresh and dried. Most ingredients can be found at the grocery store, some hard to get items can be found in mail order catalogs with ease. I've only had this book for several months and I'm looking forward to using other recipes.

Kippy Nigh, owner of the vegetarian restaurants Casa del Pan in San Cristobal de las Casas and Mexico City, is a longtime resident of Mexico, and her love of its culture and cuisine shows on every page. "A Taste of Mexico" is full of Kippy's observances of local culture, colorful tales, and interesting tidbits about ingredients found only in Mexico.

The book starts off with a beautiful watercolor of San Cristobal, a brief introduction, and a fairly thorough guide to ingredients (listed by their Spanish names), a section on fresh and dried chiles, and a primer on scratch-made tortillas (as in liming and grinding your own corn prior to pressing it). Various pen-and-ink drawings are scattered throughout the book illustrating common Mexican ingredients or scenes from the countryside.

The appetizers section features some favorite standbys with unusual twists: chalupas with chopped radishes and beets, the classic Mexican jicama with lime and chile (you can buy various kinds of lime/chile/salt powders such as Tajin Fruit and Snack Seasoning, 5.7 oz in Mexican grocery stores), quesadillas (for the more adventurous, fillings include huitlacoche, or corn fungus, squash blossom, or potato), and jalapeno jelly.

Soups includes some familiar faces such as tortilla soup and a wonderful black bean soup, along with some other Mexican favorites such as nopal (cactus leaves) and corn soup. Kippy provides the best hint I've ever seen for cutting the slime when cooking with cactus: either cook it in a copper pot or drop a clean copper penny in with the nopales.

For those who were hoping for Tex-Mex recipes, the Main Dishes provides chiles rellenos (stuffed deep-fried chile peppers), chilaquiles (fried tortilla strips with tomatoes, onion, and garlic), and tamales. There are also numerous unusual veggie side dishes such as ginger carrots and a divine baked sweet potato pudding studded with golden raisins. If you're looking for hot sauce, you'll find several variations from tame to muy macho. A few breads and several fruit-based desserts round out your meal.

As to why I'm only giving the book four stars, there were several issues. The first, and most glaring, is the heavy reliance on ingredients that simply can't be found outside of Mexico (and I'm not referring to nopal, piloncillo, or masa harina, because I'm surrounded by Mexican groceries). Many recipes call exclusively for ingredients such as mumo (hierba santa), mamey, fresh epazote (wormseed, although it's fairly easy to find it dried), huitlacoche (Kippy prefers fresh over canned), large amounts of squash blossoms, colorin flowers, chipilin, chayote, and maguey syrup. For the average cook, these ingredients will be nearly impossible to locate. Some of the recipes call for substitutions, but it changes the overall flavor of the original dish.

I enjoyed reading about indigenous ingredients and native culture in the highlands, but was sort of nonplussed at Kippy's heavy use of textured vegetable protein (TVP). First of all, I'm allergic to soy, so it wasn't an option for me. But I was surprised at the addition of soy to classic dishes such as chiles rellenos, mole enchiladas, and tostadas; surely these dishes would be just as flavorful using beans or other legumes? TVP hardly seems authentic in the sense that it's heavily processed; the remained of "A Taste of Mexico" goes to great lengths to use the freshest (preferably organic) produce, so I found that inclusion a bit odd.

Most of the recipes are fairly labor-intensive, although many are only in the oven for 30 minutes or less (anytime you work with fresh or dried chiles adds to your cooking time for seeding, deveining, roasting, etc.). I liked the fact that detailed nutritional info was included as well. However, I guess I was looking more for "Tex-Mex" rather than Mexican-vegetarian fusion; the recipe for oatmeal patties took me by surprise.

Final verdict: this is a beautifully-assembled collection of recipes, but there are simply too many that I wouldn't make on a regular basis. Also, if you're sensitive to spicy foods, nearly every recipe calls for chiles in some form (you could always switch to a milder chile such as Anaheim). But if you love trying unusual recipes and you're looking for a culinary adventure, "A Taste of Mexico" is for you!

This cookbook is one of my alltime favorites, and I have A LOT of cookbooks. The recipes are simple yet delicious. The bits of history and folklore are delightful. The classics are here in top form, and are often presented with new and innovative twists in addition to traditional preparation. This is a must have for ANYBODY wanting to cook up some good Mexican food, not just vegetarians!

All the favorites are in here - quesadillas, guacamole, wide variety of salads, enchiladas, moles, cillies rellenos, tamales etc. A number of dishes I'm not familiar with too which makes it fun. Recipes are all pretty straightforward and easy except for a few. Would have been nice to have some photographs but the text is good.

The best regional cookbooks aren't just a compilation of recipes; they carry you into the region, illuminating culture through cuisine. Kippy Nigh's A Taste of Mexico does just that: it carries you into the heart of Mexico, especially the author's adopted Chiapas, introducing the reader to a broader experience of foods and flavors than what most Americans think of as "Mexican food." The descriptive lists of ingredients, especially chilis, are very helpful. Because I have the good fortune to live in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, I am able to find some of the local plants and herbs the cookbook mentions: romeritos, chipilin, mumo, etc. Otherwise, I would have no idea what those big piles of greenery were in the market!

A number of the recipes are high-fat, using eggs, cheese, sour cream, etc. Vegans may find surprisingly little to work with.

The book loses a star because of the errors in the recipes. As a long-time vegetarian, I have several cookbooks from the publisher, Book Publishing Co., and they are all riddled with errors. Evidently they get by without a copy editor or recipe tester. For example, the recipe for "Chayotes Stuffed with Cheese" says, "Heat the oil in a large skillet. Beat the egg yolks and add the flour..." but neither oil nor egg yolks nor flour is mentioned in the ingredients list, and after heating the oil, no direction is given for what to do with it. The recipe for "Mexican Quiche" is clearly intended as a double recipe--the laws of physics don't allow a quart of milk, six eggs, plus cheese, plus filling, to fit inside a single pie shell--but is written for a single pie. And so on...

If you can get past the errors, this cookbook is a "must" for those who love Mexican food.

Recipes in this book frequently call for an herb called epazote, which an early chapter about ingredients defines as "wormwood." This shocked me, because wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is the toxic plant historically and infamously used to flavor absinthe.

Epazote is more likely Dysphania ambrosioides (according to Wikipedia), which is sometimes called "wormseed". Seeds are available on Amazon, and I think I'll throw a few in next year's garden. Until then, I'll substitute tarragon.

I picked up this cookbook at the closing sale of the Union Square Borders bookstore - mostly because it had some interesting recipes for sauces - moles, salsas and such. Reading through all the recipes - I confess I am a bit disappointed at the inclusion of some extremely basic recipes - so rudimentary as to be laughable. I can only imagine that this must be some thing that the publishing house insisted be added - for example - the author includes a recipe for a green salad (1 qt mixed greens, sliced tomatoes, avocadoes, scallions, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper). There's a "recipe" for boiled corn and for roasted corn. One recipe for mushroom filling describes in the list of ingredients "mushrooms of any edible variety" - edible? really? in a cookbook? Gracias, Capitan Obvio!

Overall - there are several good basic empanada filling recipes, mole recipes (a yellow mole!) and a casserole called "San Cristobol Bread Casserole" that look fantastic. Most of the soups seem pretty basic and I'll stick to "Vegetarian Table: Mexico" for my favorite recipes there. This is not a vegan cookbook - many of the other recipes call for eggs & cheese (including cracking whole eggs into soups just before serving).

Great cookbook for ideas for vegetarians of all stripes, nonetheless. And, if you didn't know how to make a green salad - you're in luck!

This book includes many recipes for classic Mexican vegetarian dishes. Everything looks and sounds delicious and authentic. The recipes are clearly written and don't require many exotic ingredients. I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm always interested in finding tasty non-meat dishes to vary the daily menu and this cookbook delivers on that! The recipes in this book are ovo-lacto, but many of them can easily be adapted to vegan cooking. I definitely recommend this book! With recipes like these, meat really becomes irrelevant -- these dishes are all intrinsically good in and of themselves!