Marcela Valladolid - Mexican Made Easy: Everyday Ingredients, Extraordinary Flavor

Copyright 2011 by Marcela Valladolid
Photographs copyright 2011 by Jennifer Martin

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a
registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valladolid, Marcela.
Mexican made easy / Marcela Valladolid.1st ed.
Includes index.
1. Cooking, Mexican. 2. CookingMexico. I. Title.
TX716.M4V334 2011
641.5972dc22 2011004241

eISBN: 978-0-307-88827-3

v3.1

For my son, Fausto,
my biggest inspiration

At 5:45 every morning, beginning when I was around three years old, I remember my mom waking up my sister, Carina, my brother, Antonio, and me so we could get ready for school, jump in the car (oftentimes with breakfast in a Tupperware container), and head for the border. We lived in Tijuana, but we went to school in San Diego. Just like thousands of other people who were going to school or work, we would wait in line, sometimes for hours, to cross into the United States. When the school bell rang, my mother would pick us up and wed do it all over in reverse to get back to Mexico. It was like growing up in two countrieswith two entirely different cultures, languages, and cuisinesat the same time.

Having a foot in each world has served as the inspiration for Mexican Made Easy. I grew up with all of the traditional dishes, simple to elaborate. Tacos de adobada, marinated pork tacos, were my favorite taco-stand find. Id start off with cool, crunchy cucumbers doused with fresh lime juice and a little too much salt; an orange-flavored soda was mandatory. On Sundays, wed often drive south about forty miles to Puerto Nuevo, the lobster capital of Mexico. There were so many of us that they had to put a few tables together to fit all the cousins, aunts, and uncles on my moms side of the family. Wed feast, sometimes for an entire afternoon, on lobster, rice, refried beans, clarified butter, and homemade flour tortillas, with the sound of the tros playing in the background.

My aunt Martha likes to tell this story of how I learned to read at a very young age: One day when I was around four in a fancy restaurant on the U.S. side of the borderwhere lobster has a much heftier price tagI told my grandfather I wanted one of those orange things with the claws on it. He said they didnt have any and that hed take me to Puerto Nuevo next Sunday. I grabbed a menu, pointed at it, and said Arent they called lobsters? Because here they are. And they got me my lobster.

Were all foodies in my house; its in our blood. My maternal grandfather, Eugenio Rodriguez, was Belgiums honorary consulate in Tijuana, which had him often traveling abroad to Europe. Hed come back with suitcases full of French cookbooks and attempt to cook from them with local ingredients. He was working on fusion cuisine way before it became trendy! The most cherished memories I have from my childhood are from the holidays spent at his house and with the food hed prepare. Sometimes it would be traditional food, like and sometimes hed whip out Beef Wellington! Hes the best cook Ive ever known and he passed down his love and respect for all cuisines to me.

My biggest inspiration, though, has to be his youngest daughter, my aunt Marcela Rodriguez. When she went to study cooking at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, I thought she was just about the coolest person in the world. Fourteen years younger than my mother, she already seemed more like a cooler older cousin than a ta. She earned the right to cook in my grandfathers kitchen. Like any good Mexican, she wanted to show off her family, so she would invite her cooking school instructors down to Tijuana and theyd all prepare veritable feasts. Hungry and ambitious, she soon opened up a cooking school of her own in Mexico and gave me my first job. And thats where it all began professionally for me.

It was in that little cooking school, built in the front patio of my grandparents home, that I recorded a tape of me cooking and sent it to Food Network. Surprise, surprise, they invited me to be a guest. Eleven years later, they gave me a cooking show. The road to Mexican Made Easy was a long one, but those interim years were instrumental in honing my knowledge and skills to be able to share with you easier (and sometimes healthier) versions of the foods I grew up with in Mexico. Youll find dishes that have been passed down in my family from my grandparents and aunts to my mom and to meeven ones from my friends and their mothers! Trust me that these are tried and trueand delicious.

Then its my job to make sure the recipes are simple to make for anyone, anywhere. It can be a little bit of a challenge to find the balance between easy and authentic. We have Mexican crema in San Diego but not so much in smaller American towns. But I dont want that to be a barrier to cooking up some amazing Mexican food! So I test recipes with both the traditional ingredients as well as easy-to-find substitutions to make sure the results are equally delicious. I also make an effort to create dishes that everyone knows and lovesbut with Mexican flair, like , which have become staples in my house.

Then theres also the influence my son, Fausto, has in the whole process. He tests a lot of my recipes and, although he is not a picky eater at all (you can catch him eating sea urchin at the seafood market), he is very impatient, as most six-year-olds are. And at home its just me and him, so its not like someone can play ball with him while I hole up in the kitchen making dinner. (Hes wise to the fact that Yogo, our twelve-year-old shihtzu, is not actually his brother, so it no longer flies when I tell him to go outside and play ball with Yogo while I finish making the enchiladas.) In other words, its gotta be good and its gotta be quick. And who doesnt love that?

With just two of us, we always have leftovers, so Ive also become the queen of transforming yesterdays ; because theyre dry, they absorb less oil, and they stand up to the sauce better so you get a crispier texture.

Ive been paying very close attention to your demands on Facebook, Twitter, and my blog, and so youll find many of the recipes youve been asking for in this book. Here are the tricks and stories that make up my cooking life, the flavors of Mexico with ingredients you can find at your supermarket. I promise you wont need a