Thomasina Miers - Mexican Food Made Simple

To Alex, Sam and Damian who looked after me in Mexico, and to Mark who found me when I came home

Mexico thousands of miles away, separated from us by the Atlantic Ocean and by an exciting but mysterious culture of salsa and chillies, wrestling, a bloodthirsty Aztec history and a passionate love for white corn. The country transfixed me when I stepped onto its soil for the first time and it still does today. It was so alive, so vivid with its music, its colour, its bustle and its chaotic sense of fun. I was 18 when I first arrived. I had barely left home before and was desperate for independence and thirsting for adventure. Mexico more than fulfilled my quest.

When I came home, I missed the colour and the people but in particular I yearned for the food. Everything about it had taken me by surprise. It was so full of intriguing flavours and spices, hot, refreshing and satisfying all at once.

In Mexican Food Made Simple , I will show you how easy, healthy and exciting Mexican food really is. I want to share the recipes that I have gathered over the years, their flavours far more familiar than you might expect, using ingredients that are all around you. And I will introduce you to the simple cooking techniques I have been shown by generous cooks and chefs.

The food I first tried in Mexico seemed exotic and out of reach, but the more I learn about this cuisine, the more I see the similarities in foods across the world. The first tamales I ate in Oaxaca strike me as a cross between Chinese dumplings and Italian polenta, the small corn parcels stuffed with sweet and savoury sauces and steamed in huge metal tins. In fact, many of the corn snacks sold from street stands in Mexico have parallels in the street food of the Far East and southern India.

As for taste, it is almost as if the British and the Mexicans were related in a former life. We share a love of slow-braised meats and an unadulterated passion for pork. Our food is rich with spices and allspice, clove, cinnamon and pepper also season Mexican sauces and marinades. We share a passion for puddings, whether it is for doughnuts (ours are filled with jam, theirs with toffee); rice pudding (in Mexico served chilled); custard or chocolate. We both love beer and drinking it with crispy, salty pork scratchings. We enjoy the occasional stiff drink, even if its whisky here and tequila over there. We love having sauces and dressings with our food ketchups, mayonnaises and jellies over here, salsas and moles over there.

You will find traces of Mexico all around you in your kitchen. Its amazing sunny climate has given us corn, avocados, courgettes and squash, tomatoes, chillies, chocolate, beans of all shapes and sizes, vanilla and coffee. Without Mexico, there would be no spaghetti Bolognese, no chocolate ice cream, no vanilla custard, no hot curries. Mexicos indigenous chillies, tomatoes and corn have travelled the world and put down roots in most other cuisines.

In Mexico, cooks use a simple toolbox of flavourings to produce complex, rich dishes. Spices like cinnamon, allspice and cloves; herbs like coriander, bay leaves, thyme and oregano and fresh fruit and vegetables like lime, onion and chillies all infuse flavour into dishes using only one or two simple cooking techniques.

Freshly made or roast salsas appear in every cantina to spoon over your food, each with its own gentle, sweet, aromatic, citrusy or just ready to blow your head off character. They taste so different and the flavours are so complex, yet they are all made with just a few easy-to-learn cooking techniques.

First of all, fresh ingredients such as chillies, limes, herbs, tomatoes and fish are simply chopped up and served raw and fresh, packed with goodness and vitamins. For more complex flavours, onions, chillies and tomatoes are pan-roasted to add an extra depth. The same methods are used for making moles, just using more ingredients. Meats and seafood are marinated in a mix of chillies and citrus juices and then just grilled to add to tacos, tostadas and other street food. Alternatively, meats are left in the oven to slow-cook in spices and chilli marinades, then shredded and added to street food. In the same way as meat and fish are poached or marinated to add flavour, puddings are infused with flavours from vanilla pods and cinnamon sticks to star anise or citrus.

These simple cooking techniques are then complemented by a cuisine that embraces contrasts of texture, taste, colour and smell and has a neat way of building up flavour. Ingredients are layered over each other to create exotic-tasting dishes. Take any ingredient away and you are searching for the missing link, taste any flavour alone and you wonder what the fuss is about. The richness of cooked dishes is balanced by citrus juices and home-made vinegars, crunchy relishes and fresh salsas. Layer up a tostada, with the texture of crisp corn, the slow-cooked savoury filling, the crunch of fresh lettuce, the cool crema, the fire of a freshly made salsa and the tanginess of crumbled fresh cheese and you begin to get the ambrosial quality of Mexican food.

Lets bury that myth that associates Mexico with cheap, heavy food and discover what its really about. Until the Spanish conquered Mexico, bringing with them the pig and sugar cane, the Aztecs lived largely off vegetables flavoured with spices and herbs. Gluten-free corn, protein-rich beans and chillies, tomatoes and courgettes, full of vitamins and minerals, formed the basis of their diet, with just the occasional turkey or goat to feast on if the hunters got lucky. Even the odd hot chocolate could not make inroads into this incredibly healthy diet.