Latin American

Pesto with both Italian and Mexican touches turns simple grilled or broiled fish into a delicious entrée.

This salad gets its flavor from cumin, jalapeño, lime juice—and, surprisingly, a touch of honey.

Spice up lean grilled hamburgers, chicken breasts, or pork tenderloin with this wonderful salsa, which gets its smoky flavor from the chipotle chile. Regulate the heat from mild to spicy by the amount of chipotle you add.

Sweet and spicy, this fruit salsa is a refreshing accompaniment to grilled chicken, pork, fish, or shrimp. It is also great as a quick, healthy snack when served on apple or pear slices or warm whole-wheat pita triangles.

This dessert is always a hit in my cooking classes. The combination of chocolate, cinnamon, and smoky chipotle often appears in Southwest American and Mexican cuisine, and the flavors marry beautifully in a wood-fired cooking environment. If you want a bit more heat, add more chile paste. You can also add a touch of chile powder to the Cinnamon-Caramel Sauce.

Bruce Aidells is a big fan of wood-fired cooking. Because a wood-burning oven has the ability to hold heat for long periods, it’s ideal for long, slow cooking overnight. Chili has become such a popular American classic that there are chili cookoffs and festivals held all over the country. Chili con carne has its origins in the slow-cooked stews from Mexico. One such stew, chili colorado, was no doubt made in clay pots and cooked overnight in the village baker’s oven. In this recipe the ingredients are just combined and cooked slowly over a long period of time.

I love the Southwest of the United States and the foods of that region. This recipe features three ingredients borrowed from its Native American culture: corn, beans, and peppers. Here, the stew is made with vegetable stock, but you can also use chicken stock. Wood-roasted pork shoulder or chicken can be shredded and added to the dish for an even heartier meal. The heirloom beans come from my friend Steve Sando’s company, Rancho Gordo. You can substitute other dried beans, but the flavor will be best if you use Rancho Gordo beans (see Resources). The stew can be made a day ahead and reheated just before serving. Any leftovers are terrific as a filling for tamales or enchiladas.

We’re sweet onion junkies and whenever beef is on the grill, so are a pile of onion slices. At first, we just served them with Mexican fajita feasts, but then quickly found that their sweet, salty, smoky, soft, and crisp qualities turned plain old burgers into chopped steak and added richness and depth to all kinds of meats. Now that we’ve become cheaters, so have the onions. Charred in the oven, these smoky sweet onions are just what cheater brisket needs on the side. Days later diced leftover onions end up in all kinds of meals like a weekend fridge scramble, hash browns, baked beans, and green beans. Georgia’s Vidalia onions are a big thing in Tennessee, and we’re seeing more and more varieties of sweet onions from Texas and Washington. Take your pick, but any yellow or white onion will do the job.

Posole (pronounced poh-SO-lay), a Mexican soup adopted by northern New Mexico, is all about the hominy—bloated corn kernels softened with an alkali. Purists will cook their own from dried corn, but canned hominy is a terrific pantry staple for making a quick soup. Pork is the traditional meat for posole, but we like it with cheater chicken and beef as well. Serve posole in big bowls with a side of thinly shredded cabbage, diced onions, chopped tomato, a crisp tostado to crumble in the soup, and a lime wedge. Punch it up with a little hot sauce. Every time we make a batch, Min always says we should make this more often.

We had never considered grilling monster kebabs of unidentifiable cuts of meat until we spotted those churrascaria ads in airline magazines. The Brazilian barbecue called churrasco (pronounced shoo-RAS-koo) prepared on oversized spits looks especially good when you’re strapped in a seat at 35,000 feet with only a tiny bag of peanuts. At home, a family-size sirloin, some rib eyes, or beef tenderloin steaks taste just as Brazilian with a side of chimichurri, the traditional spicy mix of fresh cilantro and parsley, onions, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil. We oil up and simply season the steaks with nothing more than salt and pepper before searing under a hot broiler. Instead of bothering with cutting the meat into chunks for skewers, cook the steaks whole and carve them into thick slices before serving. Everyone at the table can see the doneness of the pieces and can choose how much and what they want. Complete the meal with Cuban Black Beans (page 149), rice, and some kind of salad with hearts of palm thrown in. R. B. recommends a spoonful or two of chimichurri in scrambled eggs with cold steak for brunch.

Cinco de Mayo actually marks the 1862 Mexican victory over the French, not Mexican Independence Day, as some believe. Thanks to Madison Avenue, it’s a holiday more enthusiastically embraced north of the border than south. To celebrate this semicorporate affair, grilled Burgos de Mayo combine all our favorite Mexican flavors (including the tequila) on one bun. Top them off with Mayo de Mayo, our Cinco “special sauce.”

Chipotle peppers add deep, smoked heat to this cheater brisket, which is otherwise cooked with all the regular barbecue elements. The leftovers are outstanding, so cook the big one and stock up for your upcoming Mexican fiesta featuring brisket chili, nachos, tacos, or burritos.

Super Pollo is a hybrid Mexican-American barbecue chicken restaurant in Nashville that combines Tennessee hickory smoke with chili-rubbed chicken, corn tortillas, and fresh salsas. Unlike the more traditional barbecue shack approach where chicken doused in sweet sauce plays second fiddle to pulled pork, ribs, and brisket, here the cumin-and-chili-rubbed chicken is the star. Handmade corn tortillas replace the usual corn cakes, and rich soupy pintos replace the standard sweet barbecue baked beans. We smoky-brine our Super Pollo first and spice it up with Cheater Chili Dry Rub. Serve with tortillas, pintos, rice, and plenty of salsa and pickled jalapeños.