Good Food from Mexico

Note: This edition of Good Food from Mexico has been updated to include Metric equivalents.


There are almost 500 delectable recipes for dishes that will thrill your palate. Have a look!


From the introduction:


This is the story of what is eaten in Mexico, but the eating itself is even more memorable. The memory of food will be the memory of Mexico. In Mexico, food is poetry. It is high romance and mundane work. It is the expression of affection. It is blessings shared.


Food has always been more than mere subsistence, even to the poorest Indians of the country. When the Spanish Conquistadores landed in 1519, they were given presents of gold and silver and jewels so priceless that they enslaved an entire empire to gain the source. Chiefest honor, however, were the special dishes which had been prepared by the Aztecs for the “visitors.”


Most of the dishes in this book are of native origin. The tortillas, for example, the staple of the Mexican diet, are still prepared in the same fashion as when the Indian tribes dominated the western continent. And archaeological discoveries show that not the slightest change has been made since earliest times.


Like tortillas, tamales are eaten everywhere in Mexico, although they vary from place to place. Considered an antojito, which is the Spanish verb meaning “to feel a capricious desire for,” tamales are more substantial than whimsical. They consist of cornmeal mixed with meat or chili and occasionally herbs, wrapped in corn husks or in banana leaves (in the South) and steamed. Tamales are eaten for breakfast, for supper, but never at lunch.


Chocolate, or Xoxoc-atl as it was originally called, is one of Mexico’s gifts to the world. It proved so popular in Europe after the return of the Spaniards that one of the popes forbade its use on the grounds that it was an aphrodisiac. Legend has it that the supreme epicure Moctezuma was the first to discover chocolate ice and sent his runners to the heights of the volcano to bring back blocks of snow over which thick chocolate was poured. A rare morning treat, Mexican chocolate is different from chocolate drunk anywhere in the world. Part of its unique flavor comes from the admixture of cinnamon and vanilla.


One of the chief delicacies in Mexico is fish. It is served in a thousand different ways: raw, smoked, baked, stuffed, boiled, pickled, broiled over open fires or fried lovingly. Fish was so favored by the last of the Aztec emperors that he had a special contingent of runners, 300 of them, whose sole duty it was to carry up the steep slopes to Mexico City fresh fish from Veracruz, some 454 kilometers [282 miles] away.