I have never forgotten my very first taste of Mexican food. I was about three, I think, and a friend of my mothers had mailed her some "Mexican" from New Mexico. Back then you couldn't buy so much as a can of refried beans anywhere in New England! Frankly, it wasn't very good. I've never touched canned tamales since. But, my Mother did love Mexican food dearly and of course that influences me even all these years later. I've been cooking my own since I was a teen, back when the only Mexican to be had in all of New England were the tacos at Riverside Park, now Six Flags. Along the way, I've been lucky enough to live in the American Southwest and make a number of friends in the Mexican-American community. I can give you directions to several outstanding Mexican restaurants across the Continental US, but Jared McDaniel, author of Delicious Authentic Mexican Food: Easy Mexican Recipes for Cooking the Perfect Mexican Meal is exactly right when he says that what you make yourself will be better than anything you can buy out - at least most of the time. There still are very few decent Mexican restaurants in New England, so I indulge myself at least several times a week and "Mexican" is by far the largest ethnic section in my huge (600 and counting) library of cookbooks. I figure there is no such thing as too many Mexican cookbooks, so my collection contains more than a few.
As I sit here typing this my kitchen is redolent of chile, beans and chorizo and even though I've just finished a Mexican Pizza dribbled with Jared's Red Sauce, the smell is enough to make my mouth water. Nothing smells better than homemade Red Sauce and Jared's recipe is spot on, though I will admit my Red Sauce is closer to a brown sauce. I used half chile pasilla and half chile ancho because that is what I had handy for dried chile. Yum, yum! I ended up with plenty for several meals and some to freeze. (This could easily be used as Enchilada Sauce and this is likely what I will do with most of it.) The Mexican Pizza - really sort of a flat Navajo Taco - was scrumptious. (I still have some of that sauce on my chin LOL.)
What McDaniel has given us in Delicious Authentic Mexican Food is not really Mexican. Certainly it isn't Mexican haute cuisine, but it is without a doubt what most Americans know as Mexican food - street food really, the stuff of a quick lunch from the taco stand. That doesn't make it any less good. In fact, street food is some of my favorite "Mexican." I'm sure you'll find some of your favorites here too.
Delicious Authentic Mexican Food is pretty nicely put together. There is a picture for nearly every recipe. There is a Table of Contents so you don't have to page through recipe after recipe to get to the one that you want. Jared provides a nice discussion of Mexican ingredients that are commonly found across the US. One feature that I particularly liked is a very nice illustration of the various commonly found fresh chiles along with their name and description. As I recall, none of the rest of my Mexican collection has been thoughtful enough to provide pictures.
I did find a couple of things that might be improved on. For some reason, the Table of Contents does not show up in the Kindle menu. You'll need to click "Beginning" and then turn a page. (This seems to be all too common with Kindle cookbooks.) Some of the recipes start in the middle of a page. My bookmark for the Red Sauce recipe reads "tomatillos and chiles, cover and cook" - the first words on that page - and it would have been very nice if the ingredient listing for Red Sauce in the Mexican Pizza recipe, which reads "Red Sauce (see recipe)", had been turned into a link that took me to the Red Sauce recipe. I do wish that Jared had used fewer canned beans and perhaps given a recipe or two to make your own. Nothing is easier than beans. All in all though, Delicious Authentic Mexican Food is very nicely done. I think you'll enjoy cooking from this one.
Recommended!
