Customer Reviews

Truly Mexican: Essential Recipes and Techniques for Authentic Mexican Cooking

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got this book because I love Fonda, Roberto Santibanez's restaurant in Brooklyn, and because I just moved to a college town in the midwest and was hurting REAL BAD for good mexican food. We don't get that here-- just things with sticky orange cheese sauce. So if I wanted good Mexican, i had to learn how to make it. And since Fonda was the restaurant that really opened my eyes to the endless, fresh, and elegant possibilities of Mexican food, this book seemed like a good choice.

My first time out, i did exactly what you are NOT supposed to do and tackled the most complicated recipe in the book, the black mole from Oaxaca. He suggests you start simpler and work up to that, but I was hungry and ambitious. I invited a friend over and we made an evening of it, taking turns with the roasting, seeding, and frying, and then we waited, while it burbled gently on the stove, and read People en Espanol. We poached chicken breasts and also made the fresh tomatillo salsa, and then we sat down to eat with our friends. You have never heard such amazement-- from us and from them. We made this?! We made this! We can;t believe we made this! It was worth every minute, and that is a recipe i would not have wanted to attempt in less capable hands.

Since then, I've made the Pistachio pipian, carnitas, a bunch of the salsas (try the cucumber!) and three adobos. And I am a Mexican cooking goddess, right here in the snowy midwest.

I have Santibanez' first book and his Enchiladas Suizas are my go-to recipe. I've seen him occasionally on TV. He is not as well known as Rick Bayless, but he is the real deal. I love the way this book is organized--three notable chapters are (1) SALSAS: recipes using mostly fresh ingredients such as tomatoes, tomatillos, fresh peppers, onions, and sometimes mixed with dried chiles, etc. (2) GUACAMOLES: about a dozen variations to play with; (3) ADOBOS: recipes using dried chilies and very few pantry ingredients such as salt, vinegar, sugar, etc.. Another chapter on MOLES is there when feeling more adventurous to use more ingredients and when the time allows. I jumped in w/the Adobos. Used some guajillos I had stored. I got my feet wet with the dried guajillo adobo paste, then marinated and grilled a skirt steak with it. I am 'jumping ahead' today to a 3-chile blend adobo. Dried chilies are available most everywhere now and tons of places online so no excuse to not make these. Even the layout of each chapter shows thought and clear planning as well. The one-chili adobo recipes come first, then the two-, and 3-chili blend adobos. I find this so user friendly when entering a new domain of cooking with chilies. He explains that adobos can be used as a thicker paste to marinate and coat a meat/fish for grilling/frying, or using more of it with broth it can be used for slow cooking and braising. He gives specific recipes using all kinds of meats while recommending specific adobos for each. The only change I make is to add more sweetener by a tbs. or two (agave, honey, etc) than he lists and sometimes when he doesn't. Unless you're a 'Truly' Mexican chili head, you may agree with me. To my palate, it helps to balance out the heat. His adobos can be made ahead, refrigerated or frozen, and all that and more of what you need to know is clearly explained taking the novice as well as advanced cook into his domain.

But there is so much more here...how to make homemade tamales and tortillas for one...recipes ranging from the simple to the sublime. Even easy side dishes are here. Lots of pics, book makes a great gift, which is exactly my plan--will gift this book to my son and his wife along with a starter supply of dried chilies!

I'm slightly scared to write this review, because another reviewer got flamed pretty bad for saying the same thing. But I have to reiterate. Regardless if it is forewarned in the description that - this is not much of a mexican meal cookbook. I bought this as a gift for someone to learn some mexican recipes, to cook actual mexican meals. But I have returned this book because it probably only contains maybe 2 dozen (if that) actual recipes for entrees (and thats pushing it too because there are seperate recipes for each one chicken with X sauce, pork with X sauce, fish with X sauce. There are roughly 160 pages dedicates to sauces, salsa, guacamole (this is not an exaggeration). Needless to say - without knowing any better - sauces must be important to mexican cooking - but this book would have been much better if titled "Mexican sauces, salsa, and guacamole... and a few things to put it on". I'm writing this review because I'm confident it will help someone else who might want to buy this book.

One thing's for sure -- this is a rather beautiful cookbook. The graphic design seems drawn from the Culinary Institute of America's more recent cookbooks, appropriate since author Santibañez works with them on occasion. The usual (dare I say stereotypical) yellows and earth tones that seem to mark most Mexican cookbooks give way to food photography that would be the pride of any cuisine, and even the cover is dominated by pink more than anything else. If you want this book for nothing more than graphic design and food porn, it's a five-star book on that reason alone.

But that obscures something fundamentally different about this book -- while giving props to people like Rick Bayless for their work on Mexican regional cooking, Santibañez seeks to find what unifies Mexican food rather than differentiates it, and he does this by placing an emphasis on sauces, an approach that might come off as a bit heretical to the average grandmother but is directly inspired by Escoffier's work with French cuisine. As a result, the book frames much of its cooking in terms of characteristic flavors, and many of the pictures are recipes in their own right, foods cooked in and/or dressed with the sauces written up in the book. There's a few of the more popular basics like tacos and tamales, but they're really sideshows, things to make with the flavors the book explores.

All in all, I don't have a single bad thing to say about this book. It brings out some of the haute cuisine aspects of the cuisine that aren't really well known north of the border, as well as making improvisation in a Mexican style every bit as easy as Italian or French. There's no reason whatsoever to denigrate Rick Bayless or Diana Kennedy; they're as good as it gets. But Santibañez brings something new to the party, the roots of a nueva cocina mexicana that might just be the beginning of something big.

So far I'm really loving this book. I've only cooked from it a couple times but I really like the way it's set up. It's one of the first cookbooks to remind me of culinary school because its based on the idea that if you learn (and master) a couple key techniques, you can make so many amazing dishes!

The carnitas are amazing--a recipe I know I'll use over and over again. And all the salsas--I love how many different options the chefs offer and the ones I've tried were v. yummy.

Truly Mexican also has terrific photography, and for me, that's essential--it's what makes me want to make a recipe.

This is a wonderful cookbook for authentic Mexican food. It's beautiful, easy to read & concisely written.

Santibanez starts by giving a "Basic" introduction to how to use this cookbook:
- Ingredients - including the Mexican way to chop cilantro.
-Chiles with a really useful chart describing the size, flavor, heat level, how to use them, substitutions, etc. There is even a recipe for making your own chile powder.
-Fruits & Vegetables - including how to check for ripeness, storage, size & cutting.
-Nuts & Seeds
-Pantry Items
-Tortillas - how to make them.
-Essential Equipment

Then on to the recipes:
-Salsas, Guacamole, Adobos, Moles & Pipianes, Ideas for using Mexican Sauces, Sides
Note: No dessert recipes

Every recipe I've tried so far has been wonderful. The Blue Cheese Guacamole, Seafood Guacamole, Taco-Shop Guacamole & Pineapple & Cucumber Guacamole were delicious & not run-of-the-mill. Then I made the Basic Ancho Adobo & used it to make the Marinated Chicken; Oh my, so good! These recipes are not very difficult & the adobo (for example) keeps for 5 days in the fridge (or freeze for a month) so makes it easy for weeknight meals or quick entertaining. These adobos have become my trick for easy meal planning because they can be used on any kind of meat or seafood. I even used the ancho adobo on fried tofu for a vegetarian friend; it was excellent.

And the Mole! WOW - I made the Xico-Style Mole. Mole is known for being very time-consuming & ingredient heavy. These recipes do have many ingredients but are really not that complicated. Santibanez has streamlined them without sacrificing flavor. And they can be made ahead 5 days or frozen. I made this mole on a Sunday afternoon & my kitchen smelled so good. The recipe makes 8 cups (8-10 servings) so there was plenty for leftovers during the week.

Santibanez is not a snob. His bean side dish recipes can be made with dried beans or canned. I used canned (spur of the moment cooking) & they were delicious.

I was really looking forward to reviewing Truly Mexican, as the only other Mexican cookbook in my collection is the excellent My Sweet Mexico: Recipes for Authentic Pastries, Breads, Candies, Beverages, and Frozen Treats and the Tex-Mex gem The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos. When most Americans think of "Mexican" food, they're really visualizing Tex-Mex, with its heavy reliance on processed cheese, sour cream, refried beans and fried foods. Authentic Mexican cooking covers a wide range of regional specialties, with several common unifying elements, and one of the most important of those is sauces.

Truly Mexican is divided into seven main chapters, with five of those focused on a variety of sauces (salsas, moles, adobos, guacamoles) rounded out with a thorough "Basics" chapter and one with side dishes. Beginning with the basics, Santibañez includes common Mexican ingredients, many with helpful photos demonstrating preparation techniques. There's a super-complete (and super-colorful) chart on the various types of chiles, a particularly nice primer on making corn tortillas, and then he plunges headfirst into the lengthy sections on sauces, beginning with salsas, divided into raw and cooked, over fifty pages in total. Then there are about twenty pages devoted to guacamole, another forty to moles and pipians, etc. For the casual cook, it approaches overkill. However, there are some interesting moles, like blackberry mole, pasilla and apple mole, and hazelnut mole, that I'll be sure to add to my regular repertoire.

The strangest thing for me is that main dishes are almost an afterthought; certain recipes will feature a paragraph in small print along the lines of "Serve it with ______ on page ##." When you flip to that page, you'll find a very brief recipe, many of which are variations on each other, like the adobo-marinated fish, shrimp, chicken, etc. It would have been more convenient to present one common recipe with variations at the end rather than adding them as separate entries, since many times they take up less than a page of text. Sure, you'll still find favorites like tacos (made with homemade corn tortillas and fresh salsa), enchiladas, and quesadillas (the author recommends Monterey Jack, Manchego or mozzarella, none of which are native Mexican cheeses; I prefer using queso oaxaca, which is readily available in my area), but by the time you've flipped through the salsas and sauces, you're already at page 212 of about 257 (most of the meat dishes are at the back of the book under "sides").

The cookbook itself is colorful and beautifully laid out, but I found the font to be a bit on the small side and hard to read, particularly the introductions, which were in all caps. I liked how instead of using numbered steps, the authors use cooking commands in all caps to catch your eye ("SET the oven, BRUSH the pineapple, etc.). Many of the ingredients should be easy enough to find in the international / Latin section of your grocery store if you live in a larger town; I'm lucky in that I'm surrounded by Mexican grocery stores with ample supplies of dried chiles and herbs like hoja santa and epazote. The recipes are fairly short, but many are time-consuming, particularly when it comes to roasting / charring peppers and other vegetables, or marinating meat. Many of the salsas come together fairly quickly, but moles are more time-consuming, with long lists of ingredients (the Xico-style mole has 23) and multiple steps. The recipes may be "Truly Mexican" and do represent various regions of Mexico, but the division and layout, focusing almost entirely on sauces, not to mention some lengthy ingredient lists, may prove too intimidating for those looking for a casual, entry-level glimpse at authentic Mexican cooking.

Living in Northern California I have many options for good, authentic Mexican food. However, reproducing some of the more complicated items at home can be a challenge. With regional variations and a different version of common recipes between each family, molé and other things can be tough to tackle on your own.

The Truly Mexican cookbook provides a resource to solve this problem. In many ways it seems to reflect a more normal way of preparing these dishes at home. The style and approach is more of an assemblage rather than a more traditional cookbook. In other words, you get recipes for sauces, for meats to go with sauces and a variety of side dishes to combine with your meals as you wish.

Most home cooks will find this more accurately reflects figuring out what to fix for dinner. Often the though process goes something like this: I have pasta...what shape...okay, left over tomatoes for sauce so then what style...do I want to use the leftover chicken or some beef? In the same way you can tap the layered, fabulous flavors of traditional Mexican cooking and still use what you have on hand. In a hurry, this cookbook can be a bit frustrating. You are unlikely to be able to get a meal on the table in 20 minutes using this book. Be sure to save your explorations for those opportunities when you have a little more time and maybe even have a glass of wine while you're cooking.

You'll find sauces that clearly originated with Spanish settlers, traditional combinations from New World ingredients specifically from various regions in Mexico. Fortunately, the author provides substitutions if you don't have access to the traditional, local ingredients. One of the side dishes turned out to be our favorite.

Zucchini and Corn with Cream

Serves 10
1 pound tomatoes (about 3 medium)
¼ cup mild olive oil or vegetable oil
1 cup finely chopped white onion
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 fresh Serrano or jalapeno chili, minced including seeds
2 cup fresh corn kernels (cut from 2-3 ears) or 10 ounces frozen kernels, thawed
1 ½ teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican, crumbled
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds calabacits or zucchini, cut into ½ inch dice
½ cup Mexican crema or heavy cream
4 ounces cheddar cheese, coarsely grated (1 cup)
1 cup chopped cilantro

Set the oven to broil or preheat to 500 degrees with the top rack 8 inches from the heat sources.

Core the tomatoes and cut a small "X" through the skin on the opposite ends. Put the tomatoes, cored sides up, on a foiled-lined baking pan and roast until the tops have blackened and the tomatoes are cooked to the core (20-30 minutes). Slip the skins from the tomatoes, discard, and coarsely chop the tomatoes.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a 6-7 quart heavy pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the onions, garlic, and chile and cook, stirring until softened, 3-5 minutes.

Add the corn, oregano, nutmeg, and pepper and cook, stirring, until the corn is lightly browned, about 7 minutes. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring until it is just tender, 3-5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, cream, cheese, and salt and cook, stirring, 5 minutes more. Season to taste with additional salt, and stir in the cilantro just before serving.

The appearance of the dish is definitely something that may be unfamiliar for those who haven't been exposed to true Mexican dishes. Regardless, it was gobbled up the night I made it. And I have to say, it really does take that long to roast the tomatoes. I kept checking in surprise. So don't worry about that timing--wait at least 18 minutes before checking so you don't waste the heat in your oven.

Enjoy!

Heidi

This book is an absolute gem. I was on the fence about it because I already own quite a few Mexican cookbooks, but decided to get it from the positive reviews, and feel lucky not to have missed out on it. It's a cookbook, of course, but in many ways feels like cooking class, not simply a list of recipes. The first section describes ingredients and cooking techniques, and the author does it in a grounded, easily accessible way. He goes into particular detail about how to properly roast chiles and tomatoes, because he says that technique is key to great Mexican cooking. I honestly felt like he was next to me, explaining things. The visuals in the book add tremendously. There are great photos, but there are also a number of colored sections and charts that help explain what the author is getting at and make quickly scanning (for example, to get to the specific chile you want information on) easy.

After this introductory section, there are deep-dive sections on Salsas, Guacamole, Adobos, Moles & Pipianes (seed-based sauces), and then a final section that describes ways to put it all together and make a few side dishes. It feels a little bit like Mexican cooking heaven. I own a few Rick Bayless books, and a couple from Mark Miller and Diana Kennedy. While I like all of those, especially Bayless's books, this book is the one I'll come back to again and again. It really is that rich, yet accessible. The ingredients are Mexican -- you can make a few things with just tomatoes and onions and jalapeño or serrano chiles, but to get into some of the more interesting recipes, you'll need to get certain types of chiles from a Whole Foods-type market, or preferably, a Mexican market. I've made a couple of the salsas, which were easy and wonderful. Next I'm going to try one of the adobos, and then a mole -- my favorite. The ingredients are long for those, but I'm looking forward to it. And there are so many adobo and mole recipes to choose from! Thanks to the author for putting together such a lovely book.

It is hard to choose among the many Mexican cookbooks and many are very good. The "Truly Mexican," however is truly excellent, possibly the very best. It is a large-format book with stunningly beautiful color illustrations, some of which are artistic extras but many showing Mexican ingredients (particularly useful for those lesser known ones), techniques and the final products. Clear, well-written text helps you master the techniques. Yet this book is not a coffee table but a great source book if you are into Mexican cooking. The author is a native of Mexico City, a highly trained chef and cooking teacher. And apparently also an exceptional cookbook writer.||The emphasis is not so much on recipes as the bases of Mexican cooking: recipes for 40 salsas, 16 moles, 14 sauces and 10 guacamoles. No superfluous text on personal anecdotes fluff up the book, however, descriptions on ingredients and cooking techniques of various regions make interesting reading.||The recipes are clear, easy to follow and conveniently placed on single pages whenever possible. Should you be using this book regularly, you must have a Mexican market available to you for many of the ingredients. The well cross-referenced index is also excellent.