You can spice up any meal with a hint of Mexican flavor. From avocados to beans and cheese, combine fresh ingredients with a few chili peppers, and you're set for a delicious meal. Explore traditional Mexican recipes and learn how to cook authentic dishes in this title for young chefs.

Since ancient times, the most important foods in the Mexican diet have been corn, beans, squash, tomatillos, and chile peppers. The role of these ingredients in Mexican food culture through the centuries is the basis of this volume. In addition, students and general readers will discover the panorama of food traditions in the context of European contact in the sixteenth century—when the Spaniards introduced new foodstuffs, adding variety to the diet—and the profound changes that have occurred in Mexican food culture since the 1950s. Recent improvements in technology, communications, and transportation, changing women's roles, and migration from country to city and to and from the United States have had a much greater impact. Their basic, traditional diet served the Mexican people well, providing them with wholesome nutrition and sufficient energy to live, work, and reproduce, as well as to maintain good health. Chapter 1 traces the origins of the Mexican diet and overviews food history from pre-Hispanic times to recent developments. The principal foods of Mexican cuisine and their origins are explained in the second chapter. Mexican women have always been responsible for everyday cooking, including the intensive preparation of grinding corn, peppers, and spices by hand, and a chapter is devoted to this work and a discussion of how traditional ways are supplemented today with modern conveniences and kitchen aids such as blenders and food processors. Surveys of class and regional differences in typical meals and cuisines present insight into the daily lives of a wide variety of Mexicans. The Mexican way of life is also illuminated in chapters on eating out, whether at the omnipresent street stalls or at fondas, and special occasions, including the main fiestas and rites of passage. A final chapter on diet and health discusses current health concerns, particularly malnutrition, anemia, diabetes, and obesity.

Winner, 2018 ASFS (Association for the Study of Food and Society) Book Award, Edited Volume This collection of new essays offers groundbreaking perspectives on the ways that food and foodways serve as an element of decolonization in Mexican-origin communities. The writers here take us from multigenerational acequia farmers, who trace their ancestry to Indigenous families in place well before the Oñate Entrada of 1598, to tomorrow’s transborder travelers who will be negotiating entry into the United States. Throughout, we witness the shifting mosaic of Mexican-origin foods and foodways in the fields, gardens, and kitchen tables from Chiapas to Alaska. Global food systems are also considered from a critical agroecological perspective, including the ways colonialism affects native biocultural diversity, ecosystem resilience, and equality across species, human groups, and generations. Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements is a major contribution to the understanding of the ways that Mexican-origin peoples have resisted and transformed food systems. It will animate scholarship on global food studies for years to come.

This exciting volume brings to life the food culture of Mexico, detailing the development of the cuisine and providing practical information about ingredients and cooking techniques so that readers can replicate some of Mexico's most important traditional dishes. Mexican food has become one of the most popular cuisines in the United States, with noted dishes ranging from tacos and enchiladas to tamales and guacamole. What are the origins of Mexican food culture as we know it today? Written with an educated—not specialized—audience in mind, the book includes descriptions of traditional and high cuisine, regional and national foods, everyday dishes and those prepared and served on holidays and special occasions. It also discusses ancestral eating habits and the way the food has been transformed under the pressures of globalization. Specific chapters examine food history, important ingredients, typical appetizers, main meals, desserts, street foods and snacks, dining out, and food issues and dietary concerns. Recipes accompany every chapter. Rounding out the work are a chronology of food history, a glossary, sidebars, and a bibliography. This volume is ideal for any students learning about Mexican food and culture, as well as general readers who would like to learn more about international cuisines.

Eat Mexico is a love letter to the intricate cuisine of Mexico City, written by a young journalist who lived and ate there for four years. It showcases food from the city's streets: the football-shaped, bean-stuffed corn tlacoyo, topped with cactus and salsa; the tortas bulging with turkey confit and a peppery herb called papalo; the beer-braised rabbit, slow-cooked until tender. The book ends on a personal note, with a chapter highlighting the creative, Mexican-inspired dishes - such as roasted poblano oatmeal - that Lesley cooks at home in New York with ingredients she discovered in Mexico. Ambitious cooks and armchair travellers alike will enjoy Lesley's Eat Mexico.

An award-winning chef presents street food recipes that represent the best of traditional Mexican cooking, including octopus cocktail, deep-fried fish tacos, and empanadas stuffed with shrimp.

A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

"In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world. Pilcher is particularly enlightening on what the history of Mexican food reveals about the uneasy relationship between globalization and authenticity. The burritos and taco shells that many people think of as Mexican were actually created in the United States. But Pilcher argues that the contemporary struggle between globalization and national sovereignty to determine the authenticity of Mexican food goes back hundreds of years. During the nineteenth century, Mexicans searching for a national cuisine were torn between nostalgic "Creole" Hispanic dishes of the past and French haute cuisine, the global food of the day. Indigenous foods were scorned as unfit for civilized tables. Only when Mexican American dishes were appropriated by the fast food industry and carried around the world did Mexican elites rediscover the foods of the ancient Maya and Aztecs and embrace the indigenous roots of their national cuisine"--

Mexican cuisine has emerged as a paradox of globalization. Food enthusiasts throughout the world celebrate the humble taco at the same time that Mexicans are eating fewer tortillas and more processed food. Today Mexico is experiencing an epidemic of diet-related chronic illness. The precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes—attributed to changes in the Mexican diet—has resulted in a public health emergency. In her gripping new book, Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico—sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have resulted in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.

Tacos, enchiladas, tortillas, and even huevos rancheros are not unusual items in many American restaurants. Mexican food is loved all over the world, but Mexico’s kitchens hold much more than these dishes. Some surprising ingredients and fascinating cultural facts are in store for readers and fledgling chefs. Mexicans use prickly pear cactus, plantains, and even chocolate in their meals. A salsa recipe at the end of the book gives young cooks a chance to create their own fiesta!