Cuisines
Mexican recipes
Corn, chillies, and centuries of technique.
Mexican cooking is one of the oldest continuously practised cuisines in the world and one of the most misrepresented outside it. Its foundations are pre-Columbian — maize treated with lime, beans, squash, tomatoes, tomatillos, chillies and chocolate — and the Spanish arrival added pork, dairy and wheat rather than replacing anything. Chillies are not simply heat: dried ones are used the way a European kitchen uses stock or wine, toasted and soaked and blended for depth and colour, and a mole can carry twenty of them without being hot. The recipes here include the fast everyday things — salsas made in ten minutes, tacos, a michelada — and the long ones, the slow-roasted pork and the sauces that take an afternoon. Where a dish has a regional home we say which, because the differences are the interesting part.
10 recipes
Tacos al Pastor
Chilli-and-pineapple marinated pork, grilled hard and served in small tortillas with onion, coriander and more pineapple.
Salsa Verde
Tomatillos and green chilli blitzed with coriander and lime — sharp, loose, and made in the time it takes to boil a kettle.
Quick Pickled Red Onions
Thin red onion slices covered in warm sweet-sharp brine, bright magenta and ready to eat in half an hour.
Paloma
Tequila lengthened with grapefruit soda and lime over ice — the drink Mexico actually orders, rather than the one it exports.
Mole Poblano
A long, dark sauce of toasted chillies, nuts, seeds, spices and a little chocolate, poured over turkey or chicken.
Michelada
Cold lager with lime, hot sauce and a salted rim — savoury, sour and far more refreshing in heat than it sounds.
Margarita
Tequila, lime and orange liqueur shaken hard and served in a glass salted on one side only, so you can choose.
Cochinita Pibil
Pork buried in achiote and sour orange, slow-roasted in banana leaf until it falls apart. A Yucatecan dish that asks for one shopping trip and then leaves you alone.
Carnitas
Pork shoulder simmered in its own fat until it falls apart, then crisped in the same pan so half of it shatters.
Birria de Res
Beef braised in a deep red chilli broth until it shreds, served as a stew or folded into tacos dipped in its own fat.