Mi Cocina: Recipes and Rapture from My Kitchen in Mexico: A Cookbook

One of my best mexican cooking books. Meals are better than the restaurant’s!

I had sworn not to buy another cookbook and then I came across Mi Cocina.. I could tell, reading through the recipes, looking at the format, realizing that he had dishes from various regions that were a little off the beaten path...that I needed to purchase the book. And the first thing that I made was the syrup for Cafe de Olla. You see, in Mexico, it is more common for them to just boil the canela and piloncillo with the coffee. Fine if you just have a mediocre coffee, no problem with burning it a little. But if one wants to do this with a specialty coffee, syrup is the way to go. I saw that his spice melange was very Arabic. It turned out to be a good syrup.Next, was to tackle the cochinito pibil recipe. I discovered that the instructions for the juices were a little off. Calling for two of a particular citrus when one was more than sufficient for the amount of juice. Is it because I am using Texas sized fruit? Perhaps. Did he test/retest the recipe to assure accuracy? I don't know. At any rate I ended up over purchasing fruit. Not really a problem. And as I work through more recipes I will update this review for those recipes.Update. And so, although I discovered that the recipe called for more fruit than I actually needed in order to make the juices, the recipe turned out to be excellent and this is a cochinita pibil recipe that I would absolutely do again. Earlier this year I had had the opportunity to be in the Yucatán, and had observed the steps taken to make it down there where the container is actually buried in the ground with coals, covered, and allowed to slow cook in the soil. And so I knew that I could take my Cameron stove top smoker, which has a sliding and locking lid, and use that to come closely to the method used in the Yucatán. Unnecessary but I thought it would be fun to do this. And so with an oven temperature setting of 300°F, I proceeded to slow cook the cochinita pibil and it came out beautifully; tender, fragrant, and delicious. I suspect the use of both grapefruit juice and orange juice is as a variant to the standard bitter orange juice, most commonly used in the Yucatán.

Me gustó tanto color: así es México.Las recetas están adaptadas al gusto del chef, pero lo más relevante es que él viajó por todo el país para encontrar su suerte de tener el corazón mexicano en su identidad bicultural.

Recetas sencillas y bien explicadas

Vibrant, exciting and beautiful both book and recipes. Rick is a genius 👏