Rick Bayless - More Mexican Everyday: Simple, Seasonal, Celebratory

This book is dedicated to all home cooks. It is because of your simple acts of nourishing creativity that folks are drawn together with delight and open hearts.

Contents

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I am a very lucky guy, surrounded as I am by inventive, tireless and enthusiastic cooks for whom the flavors of the Mexican kitchen are the flavors of life. From the crack of dawn until our restaurants serve their last guests, someone on our team is exploring, creating and sharing something beautiful and delicious. Perhaps its the development staff for the Frontera retail line, JeanMarie Brownson and Kelsey Coday, working on the best flavors for barbacoa done slow-cooker style. Maybe its the Xoco staffWil Bravo, Jos Ramrez, Alonso Sotelo, Isaac Magaa, Adrian Blackworking through a new take on pozole or a delicious new muffin or mollete . Though Tortas Frontera, our quick-service airport locations, seem simple, Andrew Gietzen and Renee Ragin invest endless amounts of creative energy in figuring out how to get local farmers market ingredients into the terminals and onto full-flavored Mexican tortas. And the Frontera Grill and Topolo chefsAndrs Padilla, Richard James, Jennifer Jones, Joel Ramrez, Lisa Despres, Jennifer Melendrez, Brian Pirronen, Hector Cotorra, Jim Ortizinnovate continuously, and so much of the endless stream of wonderful food theyve shepherded into existence has made its way into these pages. Maybe not in the elegant way those dishes are offered to the guests in their respective dining rooms, but created with the same spirit.

And then there are the cooks of Mexico, who have inspired, perfected and so generously shared the seminal flavors without which there would be no More Mexican Everyday . They are the true heroes here, because they responded brilliantly to what was right in front of themthe geography, the history, the quirkiness of cultureand turned it into something memorable.

A book doesnt just leap into existence, though. It takes an incredible amount of dogged determination to progress from the opening sentence to the final word. Deann Bayless is the one who provides the energy, intelligence and wisdom that makes it all happen. She was backed up by David Tamarkin, who edited, organized and played pinch-hit writer as we moved from the inception to completion. Katy Lawrence cookedand recooked and recookedevery recipe, shopping in groceries all over town, trying out all kinds of equipment, talking to all types of cooks, just to make sure these recipes will become your go-to favorites.

Turning a book from uninspiring black-and-white manuscript pages to a thing of beauty requires skill I can only admire from a distance. Maria Guarnaschelli, my lifelong editor, is one of the few truly great culinary editors, and I thank her for another inspired collaboration. I also thank the team at Norton, including Sophie Duvernoy, Anna Oler, Joe Lops, Nancy Palmquist, and Susan Sanfrey. Doe Coovermy agent, my friendgets the grand prize for allowing me to carve out creative space while balancing the demands of publishing timelines. Liz Duvall beautifully polished my occasionally coarse prose. And, of course, without the brilliant photographer Christopher Hirsheimer and stylist Melissa Hamilton, youd never be fully inspired by the vast beauty and satisfaction that simple, everyday food can offer.

Writing a book is a consuming, long-term project. Though for some it can threaten familial stability, I can say that I have never felt anything but support from my wife, Deann, and my daughter, Lanie. Again, I say: I am a lucky man.

I want you to cook more. Its good for you. You know exactly what youre nourishing yourself with (which for me almost always includes a healthy dose of fresh vegetables). It allows you to feel the natural rhythms of life in a way that microwaved frozen dinners never can. And cooking often draws people to the table, encouraging dialogue and providing a moment to appreciate the good (and truly tasty) things in life.

I know: if I want you to cook more, I need to make it easy for you. And to my way of thinking, that means I need to help you with three things: First, I need to help wean you from a slavish dependency on recipesI need to hand you a few go-to recipes that are easily varied depending on what you have on hand, and teach you to look at other recipes with an eye to how they can be varied to suit your own tastes and kitchen. Second, I need to help you know what ingredients and basic preparations to have on hand so that a good meal is never more than a few minutes away. And third, I need to help you know which kitchen equipment will enable you to create delicious food fast (and, of course, I need to guide you in how to use it to its best advantage).

I can do all that.

And if you like the vibrant flavors of the Mexican kitchen (which, I believe, is why youre holding this book in your hand right now) and want to enjoy them more frequently, I can help with that, too.

If you cooked through the first volume of Mexican Everyday , you know that each recipe was created to utilize a small number of easily available fresh ingredients, to be completed in a half hour or so, and to be what I call weekday leanthe kind of simple, flavor-packed, healthy food I like to eat Monday through Friday. These dishes make a beautiful complement to the kinds of weekend celebration dishes I like to make for family and friends.

More Mexican Everyday follows pretty much the same guidelines, though its a little less restrictive, for two reasons. One, more and more Mexican ingredients are available every week all across America. And two, since many of you told me that you were using my everyday recipes for your weekend invite the friends over cooking, I felt comfortable including a new special category of weekend-friendly recipessimple dishes that may take a little longer in the kitchen, use less-common ingredients, or are a little richer than those I typically think of as everyday.

My wish for More Mexican Everyday is that it will be more than just a cook-book you turn to regularly for great-tasting dishes. I want it to be your guide to becoming a more confident and less recipe-dependent cook. That confidence will enable you to approach the stove with greater ease, more creativity and playfulness, and, yes, more frequency. Thatll be your tastiest reward of all.

W hen I was competing on Top Chef Masters , especially during the Quickfire challenges, I began to see a pattern in the dishes that won. Chefs who seemed to have a knack for making something delicious, beautiful and quick nearly always relied on the same three things to create their winning dishes. And its those thingsthose principlesthat guided me when I put together all the recipes for this book. First, the chefs who won always seemed to have a laser focus. They kept their dish simple and clear, meaning that they could describe their dish in a short phrase, and when you looked at the finished plate, it was precisely that description come to life. Second, those winning chefs seemed to know instinctively just the right pots and pans, blenders, whisks and knives to use to create amazing flavor in no time flat. Thirdand most importantthey understood flavor (how to concentrate and balance it) and texture (how to utilize it to enhance deliciousness). The first two principleshoning simplicity and mastering equipmentare building blocks that anyone can master with a little practice. The third onewrestling with flavor and textureis every cooks lifelong pursuit. Those who cook enough to journey a long way down that path become the great cooks whose food we all crave. Plus, they tend to be the cooks who are most successful at introducing innovation into tried-and-true tradition.