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Cooking Ideas
Four Fabulous Cookbooks
With autumn just around the corner, you’re likely to be coming in from the summer sun and spending more time in the kitchen. Home cooks’ favorite fall recipes often include stews and other warm, one-pot comfort foods, and it’s easy to understand why: They’re usually simple to make and they taste fantastic.
If you’re looking to add some new recipes and techniques to your repertoire, though, why not check out some recently published cookbooks you might have missed? With more regional Mexican restaurants opening around the United States and with more Mexican cookbooks hitting bookstore shelves, it’s time to up your kitchen game with some fresh flavors. Here are four of our recent favorites:
1. Mexican Today: New and Rediscovered Recipes for Contemporary Kitchens, by Pati Jinich
Chef, TV personality, and author Pati Jinich is all about making Mexican cooking easy for home chefs especially busy moms and dads who don’t have a lot of time to spend at the stove. As a wife and mom of three boys, Pati knows how precious your free time is, so she’s taken classic Mexican recipes and updated them for speed and convenience.
Just can’t let go of those autumnal stews and Crock-Pot type meals? That’s fine! Pati’s got an entire chapter on stews and one-dish dinners, as well as another that introduces you to the world of Mexican casseroles. The cookbook is full of delicious comfort foods that are easy to make and will likely introduce your family to unfamiliar flavors. Chiles, citrus fruits, cheeses, beans, and avocados are among the ingredients featured frequently in these recipes.
AVO TIP: Need to speed the ripening of your avocados? Pati teaches you how in this short video.
2. Mexico from the Inside Out, by Enrique Olvera
It’s likely that you’ve heard of Enrique Olvera, one of Mexico’s most renowned and recognized chefs, whose Mexico City restaurant, Pujol, is among the top 50 in the world. In addition to that superlative, Chef Olvera has been increasingly visible outside of Mexico, thanks to his first U.S. restaurant, Cosme, in New York City, and his appearance on the popular Netflix series, “Chef’s Table.”
It’s amazing, then, that he’s had time to author cookbooks, including his most recent one,Mexico from the Inside Out. You won’t be able to make all the recipes in this book — dishes like Baby Corn with Chicatana Ant, Coffee, and Chile Costeño Mayonnaise require ingredients that are impossible to source in the United States. Don’t worry, though: other recipes (the ones he makes for his own family at home) are more accessible. They may feel slightly familiar, while introducing ingredients, such as avocado leaf, that you probably don’t have at in your pantry but can find at a specialty food shop.
AVO TIP: Want to grow your own ingredients? Learn how to sprout an avocado tree at home with this article.
3. Hartwood: Bright, Wild Flavors from the Edge of the Yucatán, by Eric Werner
When Eric Werner and Mya Henry left New York City in 2010 and moved to Tulúm, on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, they could hardly have anticipated just how adventurous their lives were about to become. Six years later, they run one of the area’s most popular restaurants — a restaurant that has no walls . . . or electricity.
Hartwood, then, would seem to be a collection of simple recipes that you could cook at home with minimal implements and without all the fancy, expensive gear that seems to be obligatory in many home kitchens today. And for the most part, it is that: Dishes whose prep work is easy and whose cooking lend themselves to grills and — for the ambitious — wood fires. But if you’re not keen to fire up the grill (or test your fire-building skills), Werner adapts the techniques of the restaurant (also named Hartwood) so you can cook most of the dishes on your stove or in the oven.
AVO TIP: Ever wondered how to grill avocados? Did you even know that you can do that? Learn more in our video.
4. A Lime and a Shaker: Discovering Mexican-inspired Cocktails, by Tad Carducci and Paul Tanguay, with Alia Akkam
Fall is the perfect time to experiment with the complex flavors of Mexican spirits, especially tequila and its smoky cousin, mezcal. Carducci and Tanguay, known professionally as the Tippling Brothers, have an entire book of recipes to get you started. Not only do they provide recipes for some of their favorite cocktails, including the Smokey Pablo, they also include instructions for making your own syrups and rimming salts, which means the possibilities for fall entertaining are only as limited as the items in your pantry.
AVO TIP: Did you know that avocados are great in cocktails? It’s true! Start simple with thisavo-margarita recipe.
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