CONTENTS
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
BREAKFAST & BRUNCH
RANCH-STYLE EGGS & DIVORCED EGGS
FRIED TORTILLA CHIPS IN GREEN SALSA WITH CRUMBLED CHEESE
SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH REFRIED BEANS
SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH CHORIZO
GREEN JUICE
FRIED EGGS ON TORTILLAS WITH TOMATO SALSA, HAM & PEAS
CRAB & AVOCADO OMELETTE WITH CHILLI & CORIANDER
FLOUR TORTILLAS
CORN TORTILLAS
STREETFOOD
BLUE CORN & CHEESE QUESADILLAS WITH COURGETTE FLOWERS
MEXICAN-STYLE CORN ON THE COB WITH CHILLI & MAYO
QUESADILLAS WITH SWEET POTATOES, CHORIZO & SWEETCORN
‘DROWNED’ SANDWICHES WITH FRESH TOMATO SALSA & HOT RED CHILLI SAUCE
CHICKEN ENCHILADAS WITH SALSA VERDE
CRAB TACOS WITH CHILLI, LIME & AVOCADO
PRAWN EMPANADAS
ENSENADA FISH TACOS WITH CHILLI & CORIANDER
BATTERED MACKEREL WITH MAYO, CHILLI SAUCE & LIME
PRAWN AGUACHILE TOSTADAS WITH WATERMELON ESCABECHE
CHICKEN BURRITOS WITH PICO DE GALLO SALSA
CHICKEN TINGA TAMALES
CHAR-GRILLED BEEF TACOS WITH SPRING ONIONS & GUACAMOLE
SLOW-COOKED PORK TACOS WITH CORIANDER & SALSA ROJA
DONER TACOS WITH PINEAPPLE & SALSA
SLOW-COOKED PORK WITH ACHIOTE & ORANGE
VEGETABLES & SIDES
BLACK BEANS WITH GARLIC, ONION & BAY LEAF
REFRIED BEANS
GUACAMOLE
ROASTED RED TOMATO & CHILLI SALSA
PATTI’S GREEN BEANS
TORTILLA SOUP WITH CHIPOTLE CHILLI, TOMATO & AVOCADO
FRIED POBLANO CHILLIES WITH ONIONS & CREAM
STUFFED ANCHO CHILLIES WITH GOAT’S CHEESE & TOMATO SAUCE
MEXICAN RED RICE
TORTILLAS WITH BOILED EGGS & PUMPKIN SEED SAUCE
MEXICAN PICKLED VEGETABLES
CHOPPED SALAD FROM LA SCALA
CHAR-GRILLED AUBERGINE & FETA ROLLS
COURGETTE SALAD
THE ORIGINAL CAESAR SALAD
PERSIAN FRITTATA
THE HITCHING POST’S GLOBE ARTICHOKES WITH CHIPOTLE MAYO
CAULIFLOWER FRITTERS WITH CASHEW SAUCE
BURRATA WITH SPECK & PEAS
RICOTTA DUMPLINGS WITH CHILLI BUTTER SAUCE
FISH & SHELLFISH
A SEAFOOD STEW WITH JALAPEÑO & GUAJILLO
DEEP-FRIED BREAM WITH HOT SALSA
SPLASH CAFÉ CLAM CHOWDER IN SOURDOUGH BOWLS
FISHERMAN’S CALDO FROM CAMPECHE
PRAWN PANUCHOS WITH AVOCADO & REFRIED BEANS
DEEP-FRIED COCONUT PRAWNS
ABRAHAM’S CEVICHE OF BASS & PRAWNS WITH CHILLI
FISH PIBIL WITH CHILLIES & ACHIOTE
GRILLED MACKEREL & RADISHES WITH A MANDARIN & HERB SALAD
BUTTERFLIED GRILLED BASS WITH GREEN & RED SALSAS
SIR FRANCIS SQUID WITH ALMONDS, GUAJILLO CHILLI & POTATOES
OCTOPUS, PUERTA VALLARTA STYLE
MONKFISH, MUSSEL & PRAWN STEW WITH CHAR-GRILLED SOURDOUGH
MEXICAN PRAWN COCKTAIL WITH TOMATO, AVOCADO & CHIPOTLE
RAW TUNA TOSTADAS
SARDINES IN TORTILLAS WITH SPICY TOMATO SAUCE
SEAFOOD DUMPLINGS WITH A SPICY DRESSING
HOG ISLAND OYSTERS WITH A CHILLI, CORIANDER & LIME DRESSING
A STEW OF TUNA WITH BLACK BEANS & ROASTED CHILLIES
BAKED CRAB WITH POBLANO, ACHIOTE & CORIANDER
FRIED PACIFIC SAND DABS WITH PARSLEY BUTTER
POULTRY
GREEN CHICKEN POZOLE
CHICKEN TINGA — PULLED CHICKEN WITH A SMOKY TOMATO SAUCE
CHICKEN WITH ORANGE, FENNEL & ZA’ATAR
LIME & CHICKEN SOUP
CHICKEN MOLE POBLANO
A RED STEW OF CHICKEN WITH ANCHO CHILLIES, PUMPKIN SEEDS & TOMATO
CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP WITH YELLOW BEAN SAUCE
TURKEY BREAST WITH PASILLA & CHIPOTLE CHILLI & BUTTER SAUCE
SAS’S CALIFORNIAN SOURDOUGH CHICKEN SANDWICH
MEAT
MEATBALLS IN TOMATILLO & SERRANO SALSA
BBQ LAMB WITH SHREDDED CABBAGE
BEEF BARBACOA WITH CHIPOTLE, GARLIC & OREGANO
GRILLED SIRLOIN STEAK WITH O’BRIEN POTATOES & EGGS
CARNE CON CHILE
CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S GRILLED LAMB’S KIDNEYS WITH BACON
STUFFED CHILLIES WITH A WALNUT & POMEGRANATE DRESSING
LAMB, PASILLA & TOMATO STEW
SLOW-COOKED SPICED LAMB WITH TORTILLAS & LIME
PORK WITH BLACK BEANS
MAC ‘N’ CHEESE — MACARONI CHEESE WITH SMOKY BACON
TRIPE SOUP WITH GUAJILLO CHILLIES
CHAR-GRILLED VENISON TACOS
DESSERTS & DRINKS
RICE, ALMOND & CINNAMON WATER
MEXICAN FRUIT SALAD WITH CHILLI & CACAO NIBS
WATERMELON AGUA FRESCA
SORBETS
RICK’S MARGARITA
GOAT’S MILK CARAMEL
SWEETCORN MUFFINS
CHOCOLATE & PASILLA FONDANT TRUFFLES
MEXICAN HOT CHOCOLATE
CHOCOLATE MARTINI
BUÑUELOS WITH SPICED GUAVA SYRUP
CLEMENTINE, ALMOND & OLIVE OIL CAKE
RHUBARB GALETTE CHEZ PANISSE
BLUM’S COFFEE CRUNCH CAKE
MEXICAN RICE PUDDING WITH HONEYCOMB
STAPLES
INGREDIENTS & COOK’S TIPS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE BOOK
Starting in San Francisco and Baja California, and working his way down to the tip of Mexico, Rick Stein cooks, eats and experiences food at its very best and most diverse.
Whether it’s the farmers’ markets of California, full of sourdough bread, new season garlic and a profusion of citrus fruit; the prawns, snapper and tuna of the Pacific or the glorious street food and colourful markets of Mexico with their avocados, chillies, tomatillos, cheese and corn, this is a part of the world packed with natural, healthy and satisfying ingredients.
Showcasing Rick’s authentic style, with recipes like Ensenada Fish Tacos with Chilli, Deep Fried Coconut Prawns and Slow Cooked Pork Tacos, this cookbook will encourage anyone to try out the bold food of these sunshine states.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Stein’s passion for using good-quality local produce and his talent for creating delicious flavour combinations in his books and restaurants have won him a host of awards, accolades and fans. As well as presenting a number of television series, he has published many best-selling cookery books, including French Odyssey, Coast to Coast, Far Eastern Odyssey, Rick Stein’s Spain, Rick Stein’s India, From Venice to Istanbul and Rick Stein’s Long Weekends.
Rick has always believed in showcasing local seafood and farm produce in his four restaurants in Padstow, Cornwall, where he also has a seafood cookery school, food shops and a pub in the nearby village of St Merryn. In 2003 Rick was awarded an OBE for services to West Country tourism. He divides his time between Padstow, London and Australia, where he also has a seafood restaurant by the sea in Mollymook, NSW.
This book is dedicated to Ed, Jack and Charlie and Sas, Zach and Olive
INTRODUCTION
I first went to Mexico in 1968. I crossed the border from the USA at Nuevo Laredo and headed for the city of Monterrey. That night in a taquería I ordered some tacos. I didn’t know what they were; I just pointed to some locals eating them and asked to have the same. The tacos were filled with some cooked meat, I think it was pork, and came with chopped tomatoes, onions, green peppers, which were in fact chillies, and a herb I later realised was coriander. There were slices of lime alongside and a bowl of orange-red sauce. It’s no exaggeration to say that this meal changed my life. My memory is of the sourness of the lime, the freshness and heat of the salad and the red salsa, a comforting mouthful of salty, spicy pork and the warm alkaline smell and taste of corn tortillas. I had never tasted anything so vivid, so demanding, so exciting. It was like listening to Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ for the first time, so loud and immediate, a brief and delicious assault on the senses, leaving you wanting more.
The next morning, after a night in a really rough hotel, I took a bus to the outskirts of town and started to walk, looking to hitch a ride to Ciudad Victoria and Tampico. It was early and cold but sunny, with a smell of just-lit charcoal in the air. I went into a little breakfast place where I could see people eating and again pointed to a plate of food. This time it was fried eggs with tortillas under them and the same sort of hot red sauce as I’d had the night before poured over the top. I ordered coffee, which came without milk. I was too nervous to ask for any, and there and then my abiding love of Mexican breakfasts began with this dish – huevos rancheros. I’ve eaten it many times since and I always insist on café negro to go with it.
I had arrived for the first time in New York on a German cargo ship, having spent two years journeying around Australia and New Zealand. Most of the time I was travelling alone. It was part of an extended and unplanned round-the-world trip I went on after my father died. I bought a 99-dollar ticket for 99 days unlimited travel on Greyhound buses and did the eastern seaboard all the way to Florida. Some nights to save money, I took the bus on a long trip so I could sleep overnight, then partly retraced my steps the next morning. After Florida I did Mardi Gras in New Orleans and headed to Houston. Everywhere was cold. Even in Texas I was cold, tired and lonely. I had a book of D. H. Lawrence essays with me at the time: Mornings in Mexico. They painted a world which seemed exotic, warm and romantic, almost like some part of the Mediterranean: ‘There – is a resinous smell of ocote wood, and a smell of coffee, and a faint smell of leaves, and of morning, Mexico has a faint, physical scent of her own, as each human being has. And this is a curious, inexplicable scent, in which there are resin and perspiration and sunburned earth.’ Reading words like these, no wonder I wanted to go to Mexico.
I spent a couple of months travelling through the country, going to Tampico, Ciudad Valles, Mexico City, Acapulco, Taxco, Guadalajara, Mazatlán, and my love of the food of Mexico was born.
Later, I resolved to give the States another try. I had met lots of Californians in Acapulco and they seemed different to the people I’d encountered on the buses in the East. They were more like Australians, though they were all constantly smoking marijuana, which shocked me at the time. I went to San Francisco, visited Fisherman’s Wharf, ate vegetarian food in Haight Ashbury, went to a party at a farm down a dirt road in an orange grove, with the scent of blossom in the night air. I listened to The Doors, to Jefferson Airplane, to the Mamas and the Papas, and the reality of ‘California Dreaming’ as a place of warmth and sunshine, an escape from winter and grey skies, came home to me.
That was my experience of California back then. What would it be like today?
I planned the trip for this book and TV series as a retracing of my journey nearly fifty years ago. Would the California I remembered be as exciting now? I’ve been back to Mexico a few times since then, filming in northern Mexico, Chihuahua and Zacatecas, and for holidays with Sas, my wife, on the Pacific coast in Oaxaca, and in Yucatán and Mexico City. It’s a country we’ve both fallen in love with – the people, the bright colours, the dazzling markets, the music, the sense of an ancient land filled with volcanoes and Aztec, Zapotec and Mayan temples, the churches and cathedrals, and the troubled and violent history, which is most arrestingly summed up in the gigantic murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. And above all it’s the food that brings us back.
But since then, the awful stories of corruption have become all too familiar. How would I get on in a Mexico with a daily tragedy of death from the activities of the drug traffickers, the narcos? Would California be a place gone crazy with food allergies and political correctness about food? Someone joked to me the other day that you could probably hold up a bank in California armed with a loaf of factory bread, so petrified everyone seems to be about gluten. I should have known better about both places. Within a couple of hours of landing in Mexico City I had smelt hot corn tacos, an aroma as evocative to me as when in my twenties I got off the ferry in Boulogne and caught the smell of Gauloises and highly roasted coffee. I had also read something quite reassuring on a US website saying that as a tourist, you’re more likely to die an unnatural death in Australia than in Mexico. In other words, I was entering a country safe for tourists, and while I am appalled by the loss of life from the drugs trade, I felt it shouldn’t stop me from going back to a land filled with lovely, engaging, warm-hearted people whose enthusiasm for their cuisine is immense.
It’s a strange thing, maybe down to journalists and their need to make something out of nothing, but I generally find that when things are reported to be going wrong they’re often not as bad as they seem. There was indeed in California a widespread understanding of gluten intolerance and other food allergies everywhere I went, but the knowledge and helpfulness in any food outlet was very apparent. I suddenly began to realise that the rather crusty view of the over-exaggeration of allergens actually misses the point that sadly many people do suffer from allergies. In California they’ve taken this on board.
Also, something I’ve often thought about the States is that what happens there tends to end up coming here. This is normally things like unhealthy fast food or chewing gum on pavements but applies to good stuff, too. On the first day in San Francisco, I went to the Ferry Building Market and entered a world of grown-up produce. The Cowgirl Creamery’s Artisan Cheese Shop, Far West Funghi, Farm Fresh to You, The Golden Gate Meat Company and The Hog Island Oyster Company – these names alone painted an attractive picture of thoughtful local food. Indeed, they’ve invented a word for people who make a decision only to buy local, be it food and drink or indeed any other product, ‘locavore’. Local was the mantra of the Cowgirl Creamery, who describe one of their cheeses, Mt Tam, with this clever tasting note ‘cultured butter with hints of white mushroom’. The Hog Island Oyster people talk about Tomales Bay, the location of their oyster beds, in irresistible language, ‘the cool, clean water rich in plankton that oysters feed on to grow plump and sweet, and the flavor of the bay is evident in every delicious mouthful’. At the market there were wonderful Cabernets and Chardonnays from the Napa Valley, of course; a stall devoted to more kinds of wild mushroom than you’d see even in a French market; sourdough bread and comfortable cafés selling open sourdough sandwiches piled high with prosciutto and the first tomatoes of the season. Outside was a farmers’ market showcasing the new season’s garlic and the first punnets of strawberries.
Years ago I made a series in Britain and Ireland called Food Heroes in which we went everywhere looking for growers and producers of excellent food. We found plenty but no one had much clue about how to sell their produce. In California they’ve understood how to involve producers with customers for many years. It goes right back to the early days of restaurants like Chez Panisse in Berkeley, where Alice Waters and the head chef Jeremiah Tower decided one day to scrap the hitherto French-influenced bistro menu and just do a few starters, mains and sweets based entirely on what they could buy locally. It seems such an obvious decision now but not so at the time, and from that and a few like-minded people a new attitude to food was formed, and it is something that still governs what most of us involved with food believe to this day.
On this new journey, I travelled with the TV crew all the way from San Francisco to Tijuana, they in a minibus, me in a pale blue convertible Ford Mustang, which was heaven. I drove out to Hog Island to have some oysters and to Berkeley for lunch at Chez Panisse. Leaving San Francisco, I drove down the Salinas Valley, marvelling at the overwhelming scale of agricultural production there, and on to Monterey and Cannery Row. I ate sand soles at a restaurant called The Sardine Factory and remembered how important food is in John Steinbeck’s lyrical book. Then on to Pismo Beach, where I walked along by the ocean and ordered a California clam chowder poured into a scooped-out sourdough roll. I ate pixie tangerines and avocados straight off the trees at Ojai near Santa Barbara. I stopped off at the Hitching Post where I had a large steak cooked over a California oak grill and drank the same Pinot as Paul Giamatti did in the film Sideways. Then I gunned down Pacific Highway 1 to Santa Monica listening to The Beach Boys and to Lana del Ray’s ‘Summertime Sadness’. In LA I had to have a bowl of chilli in Barney’s Beanery and talk to the locals about Jim Morrison and Janice Joplin, both regulars. ‘Which was Jim’s seat?’ I asked at the bar. ‘All of them’ was the answer. In San Diego, I just had to go to a local diner called Rudfords and eat steak and eggs for breakfast. Everywhere I went no one talked politics; everyone talked about food. There’s an awful lot to love about California.
I’ve called this book The Road to Mexico because, in addition to remembering my first trip to California and the cooking there, I have begun to realise that there is so much Mexican influence in Californian food. It’s extraordinary how popular Mexican is becoming everywhere, and the first impressions I had all those years ago are still the same. Basically it’s about the extraordinary combination of savoury, spicy, fresh and sour. When people say that Mexican food is all the same, it’s all tacos, they miss the point. Tortillas (tacos are filled tortillas) are to Mexican cuisine what pasta is to Italian. They are the framework on which Mexican cooks build incredibly sophisticated variations of flavours and textures.
Another enjoyable outcome of the Mexican culinary influence in Los Angeles is the way that the cooking of other ethnic minorities is mixed with Mexican. I’d heard of Indian-Mexican, like chicken tikka masala quesadillas, but there’s also Korean-Mexican. We filmed at Kogi, a famous food truck just across the road from the HBO headquarters in Hollywood. Kogi specialises in tacos with kimchi. The slow-cooked pork filling is Mexican but the additions are the highly spiced Korean fermented cabbage, kimchi, and a Korean red chilli paste, Gochujang, which you can now buy in some supermarkets here. I had a spirited conversation with Roy Choi, the owner, and it became clear to me that what I thought of as an outrageous Californian appropriation of other people’s ideas was in fact a perfectly normal and unselfconscious mix of great flavours.
People think that Mexican food is quite heavy and indeed it can be. You might have a pile of warm tortillas, a tray full of hot slow-cooked beef brisket, barbacoa, flavoured with chipotle chilli, garlic, oregano and cider vinegar, served maybe with avocado, soured cream, a couple of salsas, raw onions and coriander to add, but you make of it what you will. You can help yourself to one taco or ten. The tortilla is sometimes little more than a way of picking up food, and I’ve had some of the lightest most refreshing dishes with the tortilla as a base – often seafood like raw tuna with guacamole, tomato and shallots; crab with a little mayonnaise, green jalapeño chillies, cherry tomatoes and lime; courgette flowers with serrano chillies and spring onions cooked on la plancha with a cheese like mozzarella called Oaxacan cheese. There’s a delightful chicken soup called sopa Azteca containing thin strips of tortilla spiced with chillies and enriched with little cubes of avocado. I ate fish simply split open like a kipper and grilled and served with green and red salsas; you can pick up the fish with tortillas or just eat it on its own. Leaving savoury things, there are the most beautiful concoctions of tropical fruit sprinkled with chilli and lime, and finally Mexico has some of the most delightful fresh fruit drinks known to man. The variety is endless.
I hope you can gather that like so many who visit Mexico I am besotted with the food. This isn’t a book for purists, though. I often feel I’ve only scratched the surface. I haven’t really attempted to explain the enormous importance of certain dishes like pozole or chiles en nogada at festival times, not to mention tamales on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). I’ve taken a few liberties, simplified the mole poblano, used chipotles rather than pasillas in my sopa Azteca, generally suggested buying in tortillas rather than making your own and aimed to make things as easy as possible for you to make here. But I have tried to explain why Mexican food works for me and why I think it is one of the world’s greatest cuisines.
Somerset Maugham once said, ‘To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.’ Happily this is no longer true in the UK and perhaps never was in Mexico, but there is an element of truth when it comes to Mexican restaurants; for me, breakfast there has always been the best meal of the day. Never are warm tortillas, chilli salsa and cups of steaming coffee more welcome. It’s also the time to see a pleasant slice of Mexican life, as families, large families, sit down together for breakfast in restaurants all over Mexico. I don’t know if I always get a bit excited after my first cup of coffee in the morning, but I recall telling the crew on three or four occasions that we should be filming breakfast time. This was particularly the case at the Hostería del Marqués in Valladolid, and I’ve written about the huevos motuleños we ate there here. I could equally have waxed lyrical about the food at the hotel we stayed in at Oaxaca, La Catrina de Alcalá. Every morning they serve the usual dishes like huevos rancheros and divorciados, but they also do omelettes stuffed with the freshest and most tender local vegetables. One morning it was coriander and spinach; on another tiny green peas, chard and spring onions. I must confess the breakfast recipe here, crab and avocado omelette, is my Padstow seafood take on those lovely omelettes.
Incidentally, no one should turn down an opportunity to go to Oaxaca. It’s a beautiful small city and many say it has the best cooking in Mexico. There’s also a spiritually uplifting archaeological site there called Monte Albán, built by the Zapotec on a hilltop above the city. It’s a city of beautiful churches, including my favourite in Mexico, Santo Domingo. An artist friend of mine, Phil Kelly, painted it many times. Sadly Phil died a few years ago but I have a number of his paintings of Mexico in my restaurants. They are intensely energetic, colourful and slightly out of control as was Phil – as is Mexico.
The early morning restaurants in cities like Guadalajara and Mexico City are all about noise and bustle. When you walk into Fonda Margarita in Mexico City at 7am you’re confronted by about a dozen giant terracotta pots bubbling away over charcoal. There might be a pork stew with tomatillos in one, deep-fried pig skin (chicharrón) in a chilli and tomato salsa in another, but the least daunting dish to order for breakfast is refried beans with scrambled eggs, and you’ll find my version here.
RECIPE LIST
RANCH-STYLE EGGS & DIVORCED EGGS
FRIED TORTILLA CHIPS IN GREEN SALSA WITH CRUMBLED CHEESE
SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH REFRIED BEANS
SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH CHORIZO
GREEN JUICE
FRIED EGGS ON TORTILLAS WITH TOMATO SALSA, HAM & PEAS
CRAB & AVOCADO OMELETTE WITH CHILLI & CORIANDER
FLOUR TORTILLAS
CORN TORTILLAS
HUEVOS RANCHEROS & HUEVOS DIVORCIADOS
RANCH-STYLE EGGS & DIVORCED EGGS
These excellent breakfast dishes are quite similar. Indeed the only difference is that divorciados includes both a green sauce and a red sauce. It starts with two fried eggs, each on a tortilla with salsa verde sauce on one and salsa ranchero on the other. The point is that the sauces are separated – divorced – by simply spacing them on the plate or by putting a line of refried beans between them. Huevos rancheros should have just salsa ranchero, though being Mexico there might be salsa verde as well! Rancheros is a nostalgic dish for me because when I first went to Mexico in the 60s it’s what I had every day for breakfast, always with a cup of black coffee and no milk. Chilli and black coffee in the morning – perfection.
HUEVOS RANCHEROS
SERVES FOUR
8 x 15cm Corn tortillas (here or bought)
oil, for frying
4–8 eggs (1 or 2 per person)
250g Refried beans (here), warmed
60g Lancashire or feta cheese, crumbled
1 tbsp chopped coriander
For the salsa ranchero
1 medium onion
4 cloves garlic
2 green serrano or jalapeño chillies, stems removed, halved
½ tsp ground cumin
400g tin plum tomatoes
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp corn oil