Authentic Mexican Home Kitchen Cookbook: Traditional Family Recipes for Delicious Mexican Flavors & Memories | Perfect for Home Chefs & Cultural Cooking Enthusiasts

Having longed for a Mexican cookbook that was based around home cooking as well as one that featured easy-to-find, affordable ingredients, The Mexican Home Kitchen fills an important niche in my cookbook collection. The book begins with a handy primer on Mexican ingredients before moving on to explain needed tools and equipment. After that is a handy guide to roasting the most commonly called for vegetables in the following recipes, as well as recipes for flour and corn tortillas. After this introductory material, the book is divided into the following chapters: soups, main dishes, salsas and sides, and desserts and drinks.The majority of ingredients called for in these recipes can easily be found at your local big box grocery chain. Flipping through the recipes really doesn't turn up many hard-to-find ingredients. Some of you may not be able to locate certain kinds of peppers (arbol or guajillo come to mind) or maybe even some types of Mexican cheeses (like panela or oaxaca), but if you read the primer at the beginning of the book on Mexican ingredients, the author has already thoughtfully listed substitutes for you which make these recipes easy to shop for. Also to be praised is the author's reliance on economical cuts of meat. Chuck steaks, ground beef, chicken, and pork shoulder are some of the proteins featured in entrees, and there are surprising cuts as well such as beef tongue. Not to worry if you aren't a meat-eater, there are plenty of vegetarian dishes in this cookbook, both side dishes and entrees.The majority of these recipes are easy to prepare. Easy to prepare means something different to all of us. This is not a mix five ingredients and bake for thirty minutes type cookbook, but for anyone with cooking experience, these recipes should be relatively simple to fix. The bulk of these recipes have 5-6 steps, all of which are well-explained, most of them featuring a full color photo of the finished product. A few dishes even have pictures of important steps in the preparation of the dish such as the Tamales de Pollo en Salsa Verde.Also of importance for someone on the fence about trying this book is the face that sometimes a recipe involves cooking multiple components to make a complete dish. This is true of the aforementioned tamales de Pollo en Salsa Verde in which the recipe involves cooking chicken, making salsa, and mixing dough. The majority of recipes also include serving suggestions in which case you might need to serve some kind of suggested rice or beans out of the book which doesn't personally bother me, but these suggestions could easily be amended by substituting convenience items from the grocery store such as ready made tortillas or canned beans--although you'd be missing a fine component of the meal.The recipes seem to be dependable and flavorful. Everyone in the family enjoyed the Albondigas en Chipotle (Meatballs in Chipotle Sauce) as well as the too simple to be that good Tacos de Bistec (Steak Tacos). As the weather has turned cooler, we have enjoyed the Caldo de Pollo (chicken soup) and Sopa de Fideo (Mexican Noodle Soup).This book is simple to shop from and a joy to cook from. I am sorry that I didn't know of the author, Mely Martinez, until this year. She has written a book that many home cooks were sorely in need of, and I will be turning to it again and again this winter to add a little spice to my kitchen. Recommended.