Dear Michael:

I like to serve the potato-chorizo filling warm under poached eggs for brunch or supper. A little more involved is to pack that filling into slightly pickled ancho chiles. Here's how you make the chiles: Saute red onion, sliced carrot and halved garlic cloves in olive oil until just beginning to soften. Pour in a mix of half water, half cider vinegar--you'll need about 2 cups of liquid for 6 ancho chiles. Season with salt. Cut a slit in the side of 6 top-quality (meaning supple and cranberry red) ancho chiles; remove seeds. Slide the chiles into the warm pickling mixture and let soak half an hour. Take out, stuff with the warm potato-chorizo mixture, reform the chile, lay each in a deep plate (seam-side down), spoon a little of the vegetable mixture and pickling juice over the top and serve. This is classic in Central Mexico.


Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Mrbeety03:

Practically anything that is common in central Mexico (moles, pipianes, tingas, corn chowders (crema de elote), lamb barbacoas) will seem like food from home to those from Toluca. Most of the dishes from my books are from Central Mexico. So you can go easy (Creamy Corn Soup, page 118, followed by Smoky Pork Tinga Tacos, page 189, and a simple Fresh Lime Ice, page 306--all recipes from Mexican Everyday), or more special-occasion (Tortilla Soup, page 150, Turkey with Red Mole, page 204, and Flan, page 306--all recipes from Mexico--One Plate at a Time).

Chorizo is very famous from Toluca (check out the recipe for Tolucan Chorizo in Authentic Mexican) as are Tlacoyos (there's a recipe for them on page 190 in Mexican Kitchen). Though it's more for a simple home meal than a special dinner, I love the soft tacos of greens (page 205 in Mexican Everyday)--a recipe I learned from a market vendor in Toluca.



Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Steve:

I haven't been to Yaxche, but am going within a couple of months. We will be shooting Season 5 of "Mexico--One Plate at a Time" in the Yucatan, so I'll be investigating a lot of different spots. Yachte is on the list ... and I'll pay special attention to the garlic dipping sauce.



Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Sandra:

I'm not the best one to ask about Prickly Pear Jelly, but I did unearth a recipe for it from my friend Barbara Fenzl, the food writer in Arizona who penned Southwest the Beautiful. Here it is:

Chop up the peeled fruit from about 6 red prickly pears--you should have about 3 cups of fruit--and combine it with 2 cups of water in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a blender, loosely cover it and blend until smooth. Strain the mixture back into the saucepan (this will remove all the little black seeds), add 2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1/3 cup liquid pectin. Bring to a boil and stir for 1 minute. Pour into hot sterilized jars, cool and refrigerate.

To peel the prickly pears, I always cut off about 1/2 inch from each end, make a shallow incision down the length of the prickly pear and, wearing latex gloves, peel back the thick rind. You'll be left with a barrel-shaped nugget of pure prickly pear fruit.



Sincerely,
Rick

Dear ConsumeMe:

I've seen those candies in a lot of our local Mexican grocery stores (though probably not the finest quality you'll find in Michoacan). If you don't live near a Mexican grocery store, you can order a selection of Mexican candies from MexGrocer.com. Hope you find just what you're looking for.


Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Mel and Nena:

Thanks for the wonderful feedback! I love Tlaxcala; it's too bad so few know about it. It doesn't help that it's Mexico's smallest state, but the topography is fabulous: high-elevation pine and oak forests that are exquisite (just a short drive from Mexico City and Puebla). We took our restaurant staff mushrooming there several years ago with a botanist from the University who specialized in mushrooms. Gundi Jeffrey went along with us and we met Jon (though unfortunately not his wife, Dona Estela)--famous mushroomers. For those that are interested, Gundi sets up mushrooming trips that are quite popular; The web site about her trips is http://www.mexmush.com/tlaxcala.htm. The food in Tlaxcala is similar to that in Puebla--lots of moles and wonderful stuffed chile dishes, not to mention all the mushroom dishes. I was thinking of those wonderful mushrooms when I wrote the recipe for the Roasted Mushroom Salad with Spinach and Chorizo (page 109, Mexican Everyday); it's something I worked up once when teaching classes at my friend Yoland's house in Tlaxcala. The northern part of the state is filled with old haciendas that still make pulque (the fermented "beer" made of maguey sap) and wonderful pit barbacoa. When I was at one of the haciendas, the pulqueros (the guys that make the pulque) made our group a wonderful chicken dish (with tomatillos, potatoes, jalapenos and herbs) that I've also written up in Mexican Everyday (page 261)


Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Brian:

My recommendation is to wash the molcajete and its pestle well, scrubbing it with a brush. Next, put a small handful of raw rice in the bowl, dampen it with a little water and grind it with the pestle to the consistency of coarse corn meal. It will turn greyish. Repeat grinding handfuls of damp raw rice until the rice is no longer dirty looking. Rinse out the molcajete and it's ready to use. (Grinding the damp rice helps smooth out any really rough bumps on the surface, while the rice picks up bits of stone and dirty.) I wash out my molcajete after each use, but rarely use soap on it--just to avoid any soapy flavor. If you do choose to use soap, rinse the molcajete extra carefully.




Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Slamjam:

The classic tortilla soup in central Mexico starts with a good chicken broth infused with a little roasted tomato, garlic and the pungent herb epazote. What goes into the bowl with the flavorful broth--besides the essential crisp-fried tortillas--is all up to you. Classic choices are typically thick cream (like the French creme fraiche), some melting cheese (like the Mexican Chihuahua), avocado, chicken and an essential crumbling of toasted pasilla chile. Most people like to squeeze a little lime into the bowl as well. Each region has a slightly different approach to this traditional soup, adding a squeeze of aromatic lima in the Yucatan, toasted ancho chiles in Michoacan, and so forth.


Sincerely,
Rick

Hi..The name of the new book is Mexican Everyday. It should be available to you any day now. Thanks, I think you will enjoy the recipe.


Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Mike:

Those green chorizos are a little hard to pin down ... mostly because I don't like to use any artificial coloring in my good and most of them (the deepest green ones) have a coloring. The idea with green chorizos is that you replace all the red stuff (dried chiles, spices) with green stuff (fresh chiles, herbs, even spinach). Any time we've made it in our restaurant, we've used Diana's recipe (because I've never taken time to have someone in Toluca teach it to me). But without the coloring, it always seems less green than what I've had in Toluca. You can find Diana's recipe for green chorizo (chorizo verde) in her book The Art of Mexican Cooking.


Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Maryana:
I'm not quite sure what you're talking about, though one of my favorite taco fillings is made with corn and is a little soupy. To make it, you saute onion and garlic, add some chopped zucchini, diced tomatoes and corn, then cook until everything is tender. Mexican thick cream and a little chicken broth are added to make it soupy; epazote is typically used to give it a unique herbiness. Perhaps that's the recipe.

Rick Bayless


Sincerely,
Rick

If I were to open a restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, it would, no doubt, be for mostly American clientele. So it would be very much like what we do at Frontera and Topolobampo: classic Mexican flavors (which, to me, means the salsas and sauces) served in "nice American restaurant" presentations. The meats would be cooked to order and there would be salady components on all the plates, underscoring the freshness of the cooking (that's something I learned from Mexican street vendors). I'd make the tortillas fresh and not pander to the American's love for American-Mexican food; once they taste the really good food from Mexico they're hooked.
As far as Season One...You can buy a limited amount of shows but I don't think they will be rerunning soon. Thanks for watching!


Sincerely,
Rick

Hi...
Epazote is used in soups, stews and meat dishes. In the Southern part of Mexico it is an important ingredient in cooking black beans. It is not very good when dried and only used for medicinal purposes in that form. However it is widely available in markets now, especially Mexican markets and also grows wild, sometimes in your local parking lot if you look closely. Melissas.com also sells fresh epazote on line. Try it out in one of my recipes!


Sincerely,
Rick

Masa harina is not made like corn meal--it is not just finely ground grain corn. It is corn that has been put through an calcium hydroxide bath (which changes its texture, available nutritional content, and removes the rather indigestible outer hull of each kernel), then dried and ground. Or ground and dried, depending who's doing the processing. Anyway, masa harina is a unique product and cannot be replaced by anything else.


Sincerely,
Rick

Dear Mike...thanks for the kind words!


Sincerely,
Rick