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

WHEN I STARTED WRITING this book, I had a clear vision of what it would bethe food, the text, and the design. But it was my creative team that took that vision and amplified it to a height I never could have imagined. This team inspired me to keep going, to work harder, and to fight to maintain the creative vision we all so fiercely believed in and worked so hard to create. This team toiled long hours, well beyond the jobs that they were contracted to do and well past the money that I could afford to pay them. I had never met many of them in person, but invited them into my home and challenged them to create a book in a restricted and frighteningly uncertain world. We spent weeks together, cooking, eating, building, shooting, laughing, and enjoying each others company. We became great friends. Friends who shared ideas and grew them to greatness. I love you all so much. Muchsimas Gracias!

Gracias a Chris Cristiano, who spent countless late nights and weekends directing and designing every page in this book. Chris, this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen and that is, in large part, because of you.

Gracias a Ren Fuller. Your photos bring light, love, and energy to every page. Gracias a Nidia Cueva. You brought color and joy to this book, and I still cannot believe you built a workshop on my roof and hand-painted sixteen surfaces on which to shoot the food, each in a more vibrant Mexican hue. Gracias a David Koung. Your positive energy, hard work, and creativity moved our shoot from beginning to end with effortless perfection. Caroline K. Hwang, you are a culinary master. I was enraptured to see you present my food with more sophistication and style than I thought possible. Jessica Darakjian and Sergio Gamboa, gracias for bringing us all treats from the market each morning, for cooking through the recipes, and for making sure they worked as written.

Gracias a Hilary Cadigan. You helped me to get my truth onto the page. You took my esoteric meanderings and honed them into poignant prose. You have been my light and my support in this long and lonely process.

Gracias a Jill Baughman. I havent written a recipe in ten years without your eyes and edits and these recipes are thoughtful and concise because of you.

Gracias a Kate Gordon for amassing hundreds of pages of research about the food, culture, and history of each city and state. Gracias a Enrique Martnez for helping me buy a car in Mxico and for organizing much of my travel around the country.

Gracias a Eric Kim for holding my hand and being a cheerleader through our parallel journeys to authorship. Gracias a Sohla El-Waylly, Priya Krishna, and Carla Lalli Music for validating my thoughts and feelings and for keeping me centered through the challenges of publishing a book.

Gracias a mi mam y pap for surrounding me with love and great food. You taught me how to cook and through your nurturing and generosity, I learned to express my love to my friends, family, and followers with food.

Gracias a Katherine Cowels for your fierce dedication, guidance, and loyalty to me and to the integrity of this project.

Gracias a the hard-working team at Clarkson Potter for bringing this book to life.

Finalmente, Gracias a my fans and followers, whose DMs, stories, reposts, tags, photos, videos, love, encouragement, excitement, and anticipation of this book kept me going during the development of the recipes and the writing of the manuscript.

TOP ROW, FROM LEFT: Christopher Boccard, Juan Carlos Osuna Moreno, Socrates Figueroa, Barkley, Rick Martnez, Caroline K. Hwang, Chris Cristiano, Sara Jendusa, Penny Lu, Chris Boccard; CENTER: Brad Cromer, David Koung, Michelle Barrera, Jessica Darakjian, Nidia Cueva, Conchita Valades de Boccard, Ren Fuller; BOTTOM: Bruno, Sophia Boccard, Choco

Rick Martnez is the host of the YouTube series Prubalo on the Babish Culinary Universe and the Food52 video series Sweet Heat. He cohosts the Borderline Salty podcast with Carla Lalli Music, is a regular contributor to Bon Apptit magazine and The New York Times, and teaches live, weekly cooking classes for the Food Network Kitchen. He currently resides in Mazatln with his dog, Choco, where he cooks, eats, and enjoys the Mexican Pacific coast.

CHAPTER

STAPLES OF THE MEXICAN TABLE

Tacos de carnitas with pico de gallo; Quiroga, Michoacn

The recipes in this book represent the food that I loved eating the most

during the 586 days I spent traveling throughout Mxico. It wasnt easy paring down the list; I ate a lot of amazing food. The 104 dishes you are about to flip through are my favorites. They are the recipes that I cook over and over again for myself, friends, and family. They are the recipes that mean the most to me because every single one of them is connected to a memorythe moment in the trip where I first tasted that dish. The moment I fell in love and knew that it needed to be a part of Mi Cocina .

I chose to divide these recipes into two camps: the staples, which youll find in this chapter, and the iconic regional recipesthe ten or so dishes I believe are must-eat foods in each part of the countrywhich are organized by region in the chapters that follow. Here, in the Bsicos chapter, youll find your building blocks: recipes that exist universally throughout Mxico, organized by key ingredients: corn and wheat, rice, beans, and chiles (which is where youll find all the salsas, ready to be paired up with all the other recipes). How you use this book is up to you; mix and match the quick and easy recipes with others like tamales, which are definitely a weekend project, like a lasagnaand theyre so incredibly worth it. Before we get started, youll find some notes (beginning on ) about the way I cook and the way you can make the most of this book, however you decide to use it.

THE RECIPES

CORN AND WHEAT

corn flatbread made from ground corn

corn flatbread made from instant corn flour

crispy corn flatbread

stuffed corn flatbread

yeasted wheat flour flatbread

wheat flour flatbread made with butter

Sinaloan-style wheat flour flatbread

RICE AND BEANS

toasted rice with tomato, carrots, and serrano

buttery rice with poblano, carrots, and corn