Mexican

The counterpart to Green Chile Sauce (opposite) and a darn good sauce on its own served with meat and fish. Brick red New Mexico chiles give this sauce great color and a deep roasted earthy flavor.

This sauce is wonderful served on its own, but paired with Red Chile Sauce (opposite) and served with eggs (Blue Corn Fried Eggs, page 219) or fish or pork or chicken, it becomes known as Christmas. Why? Christmas is known for its red and green colors! In New Mexico restaurant lingo (Sante Fe to be exact), Christmas means a plate of half-red and half-green chile sauces. The New Mexico terminology has spread to some other states in the Southwest, such as Arizona and Texas.

I sometimes use this full-flavored hot sauce to spice up my Crab-Coconut Cocktail (page 79). It is also wonderful drizzled over raw oysters and clams and is one of the sauces served with the raw bar selections at Bar Americain. You must use really ripe mangoes for the best possible flavor. Also, it is extremely important to be very careful when handling the habanero. We use plastic gloves when working with these super-hot chiles, but whatever you do, make sure to keep your hands away from your face (especially your eyes!) until they are absolutely clean.

A Mexican-inspired brunch is my favorite way to recover from a long night out, and this spin on huevos rancheros is how we serve it up at Bar Americain. This plate is layered with taste and texture, from the crisp, salty tortillas up to the cool and chunky guacamole on top. Savory black beans make this dish extra satisfying, while the chile sauces pump up the color—and heat. I like the slightly sweet, nutty flavor of blue corn tortillas, but if you can’t find them, yellow ones are an easy substitute.

Fish tacos originated in Mexico’s Baja California and spread up the coast to southern California. Versions featuring deep-fried fish are the most common, but I prefer to grill light, flaky red snapper for these tacos. The grill gives the fish a touch of smoky, charred flavor, which balances the fresh garnishes of tart tomatillo-avocado relish and crunchy red cabbage slaw. Cabbage is a traditional garnish for fish tacos and keeps its crunch factor long past the point when lettuce would have wilted. I make my slaw from a mix of delicate, pale green napa and deep purple red cabbages. Sweet basil may seem an unexpected choice, but its flavor complements the citrus juice in the slaw’s vinaigrette and offsets the assertive cilantro in the charred tomato salsa.

Unknown to the majority of this country, the green chile cheeseburger is a beloved culinary treasure of New Mexico. Having been there and sampled my share, I know exactly why New Mexicans love it as they do, and that’s why I had to bring my own version to New York. With its fresh bite, the Hatch chile is a favorite in New Mexico, where there is a whole festival celebrating the hometown crop. I like to add some heat to my green chile relish with roasted serranos and use milder, peppery poblano chiles to round out the mix. Tossing the chiles with acidic red wine vinegar and vibrant cilantro ensures a nice freshness to balance the creamy, decadent cheese sauce. Add some bright color and flavor with pickled red onions and some salty crunch with blue tortilla chip crumbles, and you’ve got a burger worth serving to even the toughest New Mexico critics.

Just a few of us hung around the kitchen following a wonderful late-afternoon party at Sarah and Sam Bell Steves’s San Antonio home. Sam’s son, Tres, stopped by and we started talking margaritas. Tres broke out the family’s personalized sterling silver margarita shakers, a pretty good sign that we’d stumbled into in the hands of a margarita-making marvel. We politely asked for seconds—just to make sure. Then we asked for the recipe.

Posole is a pork-based soup that’s really a cross between a soup and a stew. Apart from the pork, the main ingredient is hominy—white corn kernels that have been soaked in lye. Many Texans profess to love posole, but I’ve always found it impossibly bland. That is, until I tried Rosa’s version, which she transformed from blah to bueno with the addition of a flavor-packed red chile sauce. Rosa, a native of Mexico City, has worked at Rather Sweet since it opened almost ten years ago. A traditional Mexican concoction, posole comes in many styles, and is often prepared on feast days or to celebrate the new year, says Rosa. Sounds like a natural party food to me. I like to serve Red Posole as a main course for an informal dinner party on a cool night. Make a big batch of guacamole (page 255) and set out bowls with all of the traditional posole accompaniments—lime wedges, thinly sliced radishes, lettuce, and green onions. Serve the posole in the Dutch oven you made it in, or seize the chance to use that old-fashioned soup tureen you inherited from Great-Aunt Belle. Decorate your serving table with a Mexican-style tablecloth or a colorful runner. Bundle cloth napkins with the necessary silverware and set out a stack of deep soup bowls and small plates. Let guests serve themselves buffet style. Complete your stress-free, do-ahead dinner with a large pitcher of White Sangria (page 175) and a combination plate of Chile Crinkle Cookies (page 206) and Chubby’s White Pralines (page 68).

True Bolognese sauce takes hours to simmer and deepen. Since the Yucatan-Style Slow-Roasted Pork (page 66) is already deeply flavored from all those hours in the oven, all you need to do is take it on a brief trip to Italy. This makes a very hearty all-inclusive serving for one; you could easily stretch it to serve two by boiling up a little extra pasta and including a salad and some bread on the table.

You know you’ve got a taco problem when you make a duck breast recipe from a destined-to-be-classic Chinese cookbook and think, “Wouldn’t these be good in tortillas?” Yes, that’s what happened to me when I tried Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s simple baked duck breasts from Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. I served them for a Chinese dinner that night, but pretty soon I was playing around with a riff on five-spice powder, combining Asian and Mexican ingredients and rubbing them into the breasts before using Lo’s baking technique. A sweet, sour, and spicy plum salsa was just the thing to cut through and complement the deep flavors of the rich duck.

You’ve done the work to make the Yucatan-Style Slow-Roasted Pork (page 66) already, so now you get to take advantage of its depth of flavor and combine it with a fiery (and I mean that) salsa and Citrus-Pickled Onions (page 19) in these vibrant tacos. This recipe makes about 1/4 cup of the salsa, and a little goes a long way, so you may have some left over. It will last for 2 weeks refrigerated in an airtight container, and you can use it on all manner of eggs and meats, and as a salad dressing base, but my favorite use might be to mash a tablespoon or two into the yolks of a half dozen hard-cooked eggs, along with mayo, for a party snack that puts the devil back into deviled eggs, for sure. (And yes, pickled onions are good on those babies, too.)

If you haven’t eaten tacos in Mexico City, then as far as I’m concerned, you haven’t really eaten tacos. Countless joints there specialize in tacos al pastor, carved off a spit like the shawarma from which it is derived, but with the delectable addition of pineapple (and with tortillas, naturally, instead of pita). They usually make a bit of a show of it, too: At El Califa, my sister and I watched the taco guy hold a plate with two tortillas on it in one hand, then use a long knife in the other to swipe off a chunk of pork, which fell right onto one of the tortillas. He quickly reached higher and sliced off a bit of the pineapple ring that was sitting on top of the spit, catching the fruit, too, on the tortilla. One of El Califa’s other specialties is a steak cutlet taco: The single piece of meat is longer than the tortilla, but it’s so tender it folds up inside and you can bite through it with your teeth. I like to combine the two ideas into one: using a thin cutlet of pork that I quickly marinate in pineapple juice and combining the traditional garnishes of onion, cilantro, pineapple, and lime into a quick salsa.

These simple, satisfying tacos were inspired by breakfast tacos in Austin, roasted sweet potatoes sold by street vendors in Mexico City, and the need for a quick, spicy meal to be devoured in front of the TV after a long workday.

I used to have such trouble making corn tortillas at home, using instant masa flour, that I always assumed the good ones I encountered in Texas and Mexico must have been made from scratch, and I pictured the cooks soaking the dried corn in lime, grinding it by hand, that sort of thing. Then on a trip to Mexico City a few years ago, practically every restaurant kitchen my sister and I saw, even those where the tortillas were beautifully flaky and delicious, had the same bags of Maseca brand masa that I used. Why I couldn’t get the results they did, using the same thing (which is really nothing more than corn treated with lime)? I called my friend, Mexican Cultural Institute cooking teacher Patricia Jinich, for a lesson, which turned into two, which turned into further emails and phone calls. It seems I wasn’t using enough water. Granted, I was following the proportions on the package, but Pati showed me that when I increased the proportion of water, the tortillas pressed more easily and looked smoother on the edges. Most important, when following her other techniques, such as her double-flip method, the tortillas puffed up when I cooked them: a sign that they had the internal layers required of a good corn tortilla. Making corn tortillas at home takes a little practice (and, of course a cast-iron tortilla press, which costs less than $20). If you don’t have access to good Latin markets, it’s worth it.

For the longest time, chile relleno was my favorite dish, and, really, what’s not to like? A cheese-stuffed poblano pepper, battered and fried, with a spicy sauce? Bring it on, right? Making it at home was a different story: Dipping that delicate pepper in the batter without the stuffing falling out was, well, beyond me. This version may seem involved, but believe me, compared to the traditional version, it’s positively streamlined. I like an almost burrito-like filling, with starchy rice or farro included, but there’s no egg binder, no batter, no oil to heat up (and splatter everywhere). It’s oven-roasted and vegetarian, but spicy and cheesy all the same. Eat with a small salad if you like.

Why didn’t I think of these? I’ve long been in love with pickled (fresh) jalapeños, and I’ve certainly spent enough time hydrating dried chile peppers. This recipe, from chef David Suarez of Rosa Mexicano restaurant in Washington, D.C., combines both ideas in one. They’re simple to make and last for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. You’ll want to pull them out for anything that needs a sharp and spicy touch: tacos and nachos, of course, but also on Three-Pepper Pizza with Goat Cheese (page 118). Ancho chiles are easy to find, but if you have access to a wider selection of chile peppers, try this recipe with moritas, which have a unique fruity complexity.

Pickled onions are the magic fix-it condiment in my refrigerator. You could serve me the worst dish ever, and if it had a few pickled onions on top, I’d probably say, “Hmm. Not bad.” Of course, that means that they can also take something that’s already delicious and make it spectacular. They’re a traditional partner with pibils, the banana leaf–wrapped, pit-cooked meats of the Yucatan. I particularly like them on tacos (see Cochinita Pibil Tacos with Habanero Salsa, page 95, and Tacos de Huevos, page 87), where they give an extra crunch and hit of acidity. I’ve made them all sorts of ways over the years—combining the onions with lime juice, salt, and cumin; blanching the onions first, then tossing in vinegar and Tabasco—but it wasn’t until my delightful friend Patricia Jinich turned me on to her method that I made it mine, too. Pati, who blogs at patismexicantable. com, experimented endlessly (well, sixteen batches) to find the right combination that would substitute for Yucatecan bitter orange juice before she settled on this one. It was worth it, but if you can find bitter orange (labeled naranja agria in Latin stores), use it instead of the juice/vinegar combination here.

Some people say that Tex-Mex cooking bears no relation to Mexican. Well, tell that to me and my friend Patricia Jinich, a Mexico City native who now teaches cooking classes through the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. Pati and I bonded over our mutual love of Mexican food, and even though I have traveled frequently in Mexico, many of the recipes she has shared with me take me right back to my West Texas childhood or Central Texas college days. This salsa—gorgeous to behold and tart and spicy to taste-is the perfect example; its flavors are identical to those served up in little bowls on every table at the best Tex-Mex restaurants I know. It’s perfect on the Catfish Tacos with Chipotle Slaw (page 101) and Shrimp Tacos with Grapefruit–Black Bean Salsa (page 102), and it is a natural pairing with seafood. But, honestly, you can drizzle it on just about anything to decent effect. And, of course, you can just scoop it up with tortilla chips.

I got this recipe from Patricia Jinich, chef-instructor at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., who got it from her sister. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity; it is perfectly balanced. It will keep its lively color for about a week in the refrigerator, but the flavor will last another week or two, meaning you can feel free to splash it onto all manner of salads, plus avocados, tomatoes, green beans, even cold rice. You can also use other leafy herbs, particularly parsley, basil, or mint, instead of the cilantro.