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Mexican Made Easy: Everyday Ingredients, Extraordinary Flavor PDF

313 Pages·2011·10.86 MB·English
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Copyright © 2011 by Marcela Valladolid Photographs copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Martiné 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. Cooking—Mexico. I. Title. TX716.M4V334 2011 641.5972—dc22 2011004241 eISBN: 978-0-30788827-3 v3.1 For my son, Fausto, my biggest inspiration introduction appetizers and small bites tacos and tortas soups entrées sides and salads salsas desserts breakfast and brunch drinks menus gracias index introduction 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 we’d do it all over in reverse to get back to Mexico. It was like growing up in two countries—with two entirely different cultures, languages, and cuisines—at 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. I’d 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, we’d 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 mom’s side of the family. We’d feast, sometimes for an entire afternoon, on lobster, rice, refried beans, clarified butter, and homemade flour tortillas, with the sound of the tríos 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 border—where lobster has a much heftier price tag—I told my grandfather I wanted one of those orange things with the claws on it. He said they didn’t have any and that he’d take me to Puerto Nuevo next Sunday. I grabbed a menu, pointed at it, and said “Aren’t they called lobsters? Because here they are.” And they got me my lobster. We’re all foodies in my house; it’s in our blood. My maternal grandfather, Eugenio Rodriguez, was Belgium’s honorary consulate in Tijuana, which had him often traveling abroad to Europe. He’d 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 he’d prepare. Sometimes it would be traditional food, like tamales, puerco en pipian, and flan de coco—and sometimes he’d whip out Beef Wellington! He’s the best cook I’ve 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 tía. She earned the right to cook in my grandfather’s kitchen. Like any good Mexican, she wanted to show off her family, so she would invite her cooking school instructors down to Tijuana and they’d 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 that’s where it all began professionally for me.

Description:
Why wait until Tuesday night to have tacos—and why would you ever use a processed kit—when you can make vibrant, fresh Mexican food every night of the week with Mexican Made Easy? On her Food Network show, Mexican Made Easy, Marcela Valladolid shows how simple it is to create beautiful dishes b
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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.