Mexican Food: The Ultimate Cookbook

The author clearly did not have a test kitchen or an editor. Many of the recipes are missing steps, others forget to mention pan sizes for cakes or oven temperatures for baking. A few of the recipes seems to have the wrong volume for the pan size.

I bought this book because my husband wanted to know how to make chilaquiles. The recipe in this book was perfect and delicious! Directions are good and the pictures even better to ensure it tastes as good as it looks. We have made several recipes and look forward to making our way through the book and enjoying great food.

This a really great book! It gives the history of the food so you know the history behind the recipes. And it is so comprehensive with over 800 pages, In my opinion it is the only Mexican cookbook you will ever need. The photography is also excellent!!! I highly recommend it for anyone want to explore Mexican cuisine.

Easy to understand and execute. Beautiful photography.

Mexican Food: The Ultimate Cookbook is an enormous book. I am tempted to call it encyclopedic but I am not really in a position to judge how comprehensive, or representative it is. It is the effort of 6 chefs, and attempts to provide a representative sampling from each region of Mexico. There is a brief introduction which discusses the influences of different cultures and cuisines on Mexico over the centuries. There are some lovely pictures, but I would not call it a coffee table book. It is much more a cook book than a book from the "X the beautiful" series, for example.There is a bit of contradiction between what is stated in the introduction, and what follows. Vanessa Cecena writes that there has been an attempt to retain traditional cooking methods, and regional / traditional ingredients, but most of the recipes are somewhat complicated, use specialty ingredients, and sometimes modified technique. Some of that may be necessary but I get the sense that it also reflects and internal tension (between carrying on the culture through the cuisine, and presenting it in optimal light).The reason for my 4 star rating, when at initial glance it does look, and feel (weighty) like a 5 star book, is that the recipes are a real challenge. Few have things I do not recognize, and virtually all include one or more ingredients (sauces, e.g.) which can take up to a week to prepare. That said, I would recommend reading every recipe through, maybe twice, before attempting to prepare it. Expect to do some shopping for exotic ingredients, even if you consider yourself fairly well stocked.I seldom write reviews on cookbooks when I have not prepared any of the recipes but as noted, most of them are complicated by my not having tins of traditional spices, or jars of sauces in my refrigerator. I am supposing that people native too the region(s) do and it would not necessarily be a complicated preparation for them.There are a great many which are tempting and I am sure we will be attempting some soon. (and I will update this review once we have). I was personally very impressed by the number of chocolate deserts, and also entrees, sauces. Those will have to wait until we have recovered from the holidays. I am cooking light at the moment.All I can say at this point is that there are many recipes which look intriguing, tempting, but I have not yet tried them.The book itself is very nicely produced. There are two bound in bookmarks, which tells me that this was meant for real world use. The pictures are lovely, and a good size, depicting various aspects of life native to each region, including backstrap weaving and colorful flower and vegetable markets. It is absolutely a gift-worthy book and one which any chef is sure to enjoy, (to include dedicated home chefs).

My family really enjoys Mexican food . . . to the point that we took a trip and spent time learning how to cook authentic food (NOT what you get in most Mexican restaurants here . . . )This book is much thicker and bigger than I expected. There is a sturdy hardback cover, thicker than normal pages and strong binding. Recipes are printed large enough to see in a font that is easy to see. The ingredients are generally easy to find, although not all of them. Directions are clear, there are no nutritional facts included, but I normally don't use that anyway. We have tried to do a different recipe daily since receiving the book and we are no where near making a dent in them, but all the recipes we have tried have had fantastic results.There are a lot of beautiful pictures which I normally resent in a cookbook because most cookbooks cut recipes to include the pictures. In this case, however . . . the book is large enough and the recipes are abundant enough that I don't have my usual feel that they have short changed the recipes.

I was surprised when I pulled this book out of the box - it's really thick.It's got everything in one massive book - savory meals, deserts, and cocktails.I don't think this book is beginner friendly as not everything is super specific, it's really meant to draw a compilation of recipes from many traditions, so keep that in mind when deciding to purchase. I like to use a cook book as more of an inspiration and general guide than a strict recipe I have to follow so this was nice to flip through for me.I think they missed the mark on printing this on matte thin permeable paper. Everything - the words and beautiful pictures - would stand out more on a glossy page. I like a cookbook to be easily wipeable with nice glossy sheets. I would hate to keep this in the kitchen and ruin it so I have to take pictures and work off my phone.