Based on her years writing her blog, Mexico in My Kitchen, Mely Martinez has brought us The Mexican Home Kitchen. It’s a beautiful book with a nice variety of recipes. I received this as an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I grew up in Central Texas with Tex-Mex as my home food. Tex-Mex is an anglicized variant of northern Mexican home cooking. It doesn’t take much effort to find more traditional Mexican fare in and around Austin, but it was our travels in through Mexico that opened my eyes to the differences. I bring this up because many Americans think Tex Mex is Mexican cuisine. It is not. A lot of these recipes are very familiar to me and I would recommend this to someone interested in exploring Mexican food beyond the anglicized border variations. Cheddar cheese and sour cream don’t make the list of ingredients in most of these recipes.
The vast majority of these recipes really are doable in your average home kitchen. Some of them take time and attention (no InstantPot recipes here), but she does utilize the blender in ways that cut prep time down significantly. I laughed (at myself) when I saw her carnitas recipe. It calls for 5 ingredients – pork, lard or vegetable oil, garlic (optional), salt and water. My recipe has an additional 7 ingredients. I will be calling my recipe shredded pork from now on. All of the recipes, even the tamales, feel doable.
The Mexican Home Kitchen is a cozy cookbook. It’s great for omnivores, has some vegetarian recipes and not much for the vegans in your life.