Mexican Food Site
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A pot of beans
No Mexican kitchen is ever without its bubbling earthenware cazuela of frijoles – beans are an integral part of everyday life and food. They are utterly earthy, true Mexican food for the soul, wholesome, soothing, satisfying.

Antojitos, the street food of Mexico
The actual meaning of the word “antojitos” is sudden cravings or hankerings, but it is used to describe delicious Mexican snacks, based on corn tortillas, which are enjoyed in Mexico throughout the day; they are typical of Mexican street and market food, and a real gastronomic adventure and treat.

Autumn gold and squash blossoms
The markets of Mexico are splashed with gold and the time of year has arrived when every stall is decorated with armfuls of flamboyant courgette/zucchini and pumpkin flowers, a truly seasonal treat.

Avocado, pear of the Indies
The Aztecs’ ahuacatl has become the avocado but the name bestowed upon it by the Spanish conquistadores was both more romantic and more evocative: pera de las Indias, pear of the Indies, illustrating its shape and what must have seemed, in the sixteenth century, an exotic and outlandish provenance

Breakfast in Mexico - Bricklayer´s eggs
Huevos del albañil are a typical, traditional breakfast throughout the country, although a popular variation is to toss some stale tortillas into the sauce to make green “chilaquiles” which serve as a bed for the eggs

Breakfast in Mexico - Huevos Rancheros
The “eggs from the ranch” are to be found in every nook and cranny of Mexico – every cook churns them out regularly for breakfast (and only for breakfast), and of all the egg dishes in the repertoire of traditional Mexican cuisine, they are a classic, perhaps the best known and most widely eaten.

Cajeta - sweet, sickly and hopelessly calorific
Cajeta is a delectable, fabulously calorific, caramelised goat´s milk concoction, as Mexican as you can get, and while it may not benefit the waistline, its intensely deep, comforting sweetness is undoubtedly soothing to the soul!

Celebrate 5 de Mayo with a fajitas fiesta
5 de Mayo, 5 May, is a date dear to Mexican hearts and a cause for celebrations, fiestas and general jollity, especially in Puebla, where a memorable battle was once fought. No specific dishes are served on 5 de Mayo but fajitas are real fiesta food and an appropriate way to mark the occasion.

Chilli - Dynamite in the kitchen
The flavour of the Mesoamerican chilli - spicy, piquant, stimulating, decidedly warm if not downright fiery – reminded Columbus of pepper, a spice more valuable than gold in Europe, which led him to christen it “pepper of the Indies”.

Christmas in Mexico - Bread of the Kings
Christmas in Mexico begins on 16 December with the traditional parties called “las posadas”, and ends with Epiphany or El Día de los Reyes, the Day of the Kings, which is celebrated with a sweet yeasted bread known as Rosca de Reyes or Bread of the Kings.

Christmas in Mexico - Rum punch
Christmas in Mexico means posadas, piñatas and a sweet, fruity punch known as “Ponche Navideño” or Christmas punch, which is served to posada guests in Mexican homes, as well as on the street corners, where it scents the night air with its sweet, plummy steam.

From Poldark to Pachuca - a pasty´s journey
The Cornish pasty is a stalwart of British gastronomy, steeped in tradition, history and folklore. However, it has travelled widely, following the Cornish tin miners across the globe, and in the 19th century, it reached Mexico and the silver mines of Pachuca and Mineral del Monte.

Huitlacoche, the truffle of Mexico
Rainy seasons bring fungi, and the summer and early autumn markets in Mexico, particularly in the mountains, are full of wild mushrooms, from ceps, morels, pieds de mouton, bright orange trompetitas and chanterelles, to the incredibly sinister-looking huitlacoche, known as the truffle of Mexico.

Independence Day in Mexico
General Agustín de Iturbide, having signed the treaty of Córdoba which finally gave Mexico its freedom, made his triumphant way from Veracruz to Mexico City. His passage through Puebla resulted in the creation of one of Mexican gastronomy’s most famous concoctions, Chiles en Nogada

Jícama, the Mexican turnip
Brown, bulbous and rather hirsute, Pachyrrhizus Erosus has little to offer in the way of glamour, but it is an important member of the Mexican larder, both ancient and modern.

Lenten cooking in Mexico - Bacalao
Bacalao is virtually synonymous with Lent and features in Lenten dishes throughout the Christian world. It plays an important role in Mexico’s “cocina cuaresmeña”, and while badly prepared bacalao is a true penance, it can be a very delicious vehicle for many indigenous Mexican ingredients.

Lenten cooking in Mexico - Broad bean soup
Sopa de habas, or broad bean soup, makes a regular appearance in Mexican homes and restaurants during the Lenten or “La Cuaresma” season, and yet cannot be considered an ancestral or indigenous dish, as broad beans originated not in the Americas but in North Africa as well as Southeast Asia.

Lenten cooking in Mexico - Calabacitas Entomatadas
Lent in Mexico sees the appearance of “La Cocina Cuaresmeña” or Lenten cuisine, with its focus firmly on fish and vegetables. “Calabacitas entomatadas” is a very simple but highly popular Lenten dish which combines three of the "milpa’s" time-honoured inhabitants: squash, tomatoes and chillies.

Lenten cooking in Mexico - Chilpachole
Chilpachole is a spicy stew or thick soup traditionally made with prawns or crab, eaten often during Lent or La Cuaresma. Although it is very typical of the cooking of Veracruz, it is served all along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and ranges from utter simple to downright luxurious.

Lenten cooking in Mexico - Tortitas de camarón
Lent may bring to mind pictures of fasting, penitence, abstinence and “giving up” a food which you particularly enjoy, but it is also an opportunity to explore the wealth of vegetable and fish dishes which make up “la cocina cuaresmeña” or Lenten cooking of Mexico.

Mexican Antojitos - Chilaquiles
According to an old Mexican wives’ tale, chilaquiles are an excellent cure for a hangover, but excess consumption of tequila aside, chilaquiles are the most comforting of foods, satisfying, rib-sticking, deeply flavoured and very good for the soul.

Mexican Antojitos - Enchiladas
As the name suggests, enchiladas pack a punch! The verb “enchilar” means to add chilli to something, and in its very simplest form, the enchilada is nothing more than a tortilla with a fiery sauce - but in most cases, the tortilla is rolled or folded around a filling and topped with the sauce.

Mexican Antojitos - Gorditas
Gorditas: little plump ones.... The name alone evokes gastronomic comfort and joy and the endless delight of Mexican antojitos. There are many ways to prepare a gordita but its main characteristic is that it balloons and puffs up as it cooks, producing a wonderfully crisp crust.

Mexican Antojitos - Papadzules
Papadzules are one of the specialities of the southern state of Yucatán, typically served at breakfast in the markets and on the streets. The word translates as “food of the lords”, a grand name indeed, but it is in fact a very simple dish with a subtle complexity of the flavours and textures.

Mexican Antojitos - Quesadillas
Quesadillas, the Mexican version of a toasted cheese sandwich, are a crisp, crusty, golden envelope made from a corn tortilla, filled with rich, savoury cheese which is all gooey, melting and oozing out around the edges.

Mexican antojitos - Tacos
Tacos are perhaps the best known Mexican dish outside the country, and the simplest to prepare. The easiest way to describe them is as a corn tortilla wrapped around a filling – but this does not even begin to illustrate their diversity and exuberance, let alone their potential for complexity.

Mexican antojitos - Tostadas
Tostadas are rather like an open sandwich: a crisp, crunchy tortilla topped with anything from refried beans to smoked tuna and halibut, shredded pork and chicken to scrambled eggs with chorizo - as with most Mexican antojitos, the topping is up to the cook, and what is in season and available.

Mixiotes, a Mexican "en papillote"
The name mixiote is derived from the Aztec Náhuatl language: metl, meaning maguey, and xiotl, skin of the arm, and applies both to the “envelope” and the dish itself. It is simple and very pre-Hispanic, consisting of meat slathered in a spicy sauce and wrapped in the afore-mentioned xiotl.

Of calabacitas, courgettes and zucchini
The Squash family, Cucurbita, is Mexican, whatever you may choose to call its various members, and the earliest traces, dating as far back as 7000BC, have been found in Oaxaca and Tamaulipas. However, the modern courgette or zucchini is thought to have originated in Italy in the 19th century.

Safeguarding Mexico's historical cuisine
The Conservatorio de la Cultura Gastronómica Mexicana has set itself a challenging task: "the preservation, rescue, safeguarding and promotion of usages, customs, products, cultural practices and knowledge which make up the common core which defines traditional Mexican cuisine".

Salsas, the sauces of Mexico
The word salsa simply means sauce in Spanish and although it has somehow become synonymous with a blood red, sour mess which comes out of a jar, it is light years away from a real Mexican salsa, which is a boisterous, exuberant combination of diced raw vegetables and/or fruit, chillies and herbs.

Squash blossoms
Pumpkins and squashes are very much in evidence in Mexican markets and vegetable dishes throughout the summer and autumn, but the golden blossoms are their crowning glory for a brief and very colourful season when stalls and green grocers are festooned with their bright yellow and orange petals.

Sweet Mexico - The Day of the Dead
For the past week, the market stalls in Taxco have been decorated with brightly coloured tissue paper cut-outs of pumpkins and skeletons and some very seasonal goods have made their annual appearance.

The Chilli Pepper Man
From their sunny homeland of Mexico to the sweltering heat of Kerala or the sandy beaches of Thailand, chillies are associated with warm climates and exotic dishes flavoured with coconut and cumin, coriander and cinnamon: aromatic curries and stir-fries, mellow “tagines” and gutsy “moles”.

The chillies of Mexico
Capsicum Annuum was first cultivated in Mexico around 7000BC and is the ancestor both of all modern Mexican chillies, and of the vast majority of chillies found today outside the Americas: all the hot cuisines of the world owe their fire and fragrance to the original Mexican chilli.

The chillies of Mexico - El Chipotle
The smooth and glossy jalapeño chilli loses much of its looks when it is transformed into one of Mexico’s most popular and widely used dried chillies, the chipotle, but its flavour, far from deteriorating, thrives on this transformation.

The chillies of Mexico - El Jalapeño
The jalapeño chilli, plump, smooth and glossy, has a lively rather than fiery ardour, and while it notches up a creditable 7/10 on the heat scale, it is often relatively mild, warm without too much punch - but be warned, it can sometimes be very hot indeed and catch you unawares.

The chillies of Mexico - El Serrano
The bullet-shaped serrano chilli, small, slender and dark green, reminds me of a delightful Mexican song, which goes: “soy como el chile verde, picante pero sabroso”, “I am like the green chilli, hot but tasty”.

The chillies of Mexico - Pickled Jalapeños
Jalapeño chillies make a regular appearance at the Mexican table as a condiment or relish, in the form of pickled chillies or “jalapeños en escabeche”. These sparky, tart pickles make their way into a great variety of dishes and their uses and popularity are endless.

The Day of the Dead in Mexico
In late October, every sweet shop and street stall in Mexico City decks itself out in garlands of deep yellow marigolds, colourful tissue paper cut-outs of pumpkins and skeletons, and best of all, beautifully crafted sugar skulls with big toothy grins, shining eyes and names on their foreheads.

The drinks of Mexico - Atole
The atoles are a large family of ancient drinks, with countless variations, some of them totally pre-Hispanic, others slowly developed since the 16th century by the addition of some of the many foreign ingredients which found their way into the indigenous larder after the Spanish conquest.

The drinks of Mexico - Horchata
In Mexico, grains and nuts are used to concoct horchata, one of the most popular aguas frescas, fresh waters, which are sold in huge glass jars at market stands, in ice-packed barrows on the streets, and in restaurants. One of its greatest talents is its ability to calm a chilli blasted palate!

The drinks of Mexico - Jamaican water
“Agua fresca”, fresh water, is the name given to a variety of cold drinks in Mexico. Not the type which comes out of a bottle or carton and is more usually known as a “refresco” or refresher, but the kind which is lovingly made by hand from natural ingredients.

The drinks of Mexico - Tamarind water
Tamarindus Indica, a tree native to tropical Africa, can grow to one hundred feet or more, with a massive trunk and a wide canopy of leaves. Its fruit is a pod full of sour pulp, which is used in Mexico to make a popular fresh water or agua fresca, known as tamarind water, agua de tamarindo.

The herbs of Mexico - Coriander
The very Mexican herb, coriander or cilantro, is a newcomer to the cuisine and yet it is such an essential ingredient – wherever you wander in a Mexican market, you will see great big bunches of coriander with the roots still attached, and green-flecked salsas fragrant with its pungent aroma.

The herbs of Mexico - Epazote
Epazote grows wild in Mexico and spread from there across America and eventually to southern Europe and beyond, but outside its homeland, it is seen as a weed rather than a culinary herb – only in central and southern Mexico does it play an essential role and find its way into the cooking pot.

The herbs of Mexico - Mexican oregano
If you believe that one oregano is much like another, you are mistaken! The oregano which most of us use in our cooking, whether fresh or dried, is Origanum Vulgare, native to the Mediterranean and part of the mint family. Mexican oregano, on the other hand, is not actually an oregano at all.

The People of Corn
According to the Mayan myth of creation, the gods made man from a dough of corn. Corn originated in Mexico, which was known as the "cradle of corn", and the veneration and cultivation of corn are inextricably woven into Mexican history, culture and food.

The Pumpkins, a very American family
The pumpkin does not have much to brag about on the gastronomic stage, except perhaps for its wonderfully warm, vibrant hue. This does not mean, however, that that it has failed to find fame - on the contrary, as it has been lucky enough to be immortalised not once but twice.

The sauces of Mexico - Adobo
An adobo starts off as a marinade and from there often graduates to being a sauce. The name comes from the Spanish “adobar”, which has several meanings, among them “to marinate, pickle or cure” but more importantly, “to stew”, all verbs which illustrate an adobo’s versatility very nicely.

The sauces of Mexico - Cooked tomato sauce
A cooked tomato sauce is one of the most important building blocks of Mexican cuisine. Not only does it have a role to play in its own right, but it is also a starting point for countless other dishes for behind many great classical Mexican culinary creations stands the “salsa de tomate cocida”.

The sauces of Mexico - Encacahuatado
A sauce thickened with seeds and nuts is an utterly pre-Hispanic concept, and Spanish chroniclers who accompanied Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico talked in their accounts of great earthenware cazuelas full of bubbling red sauces which were thickened in precisely this way.

The sauces of Mexico - Guacamole
Guacamole is one of the best known Mexican dishes and its fame has spread far and wide, to the extent that you can buy it in a tub in the refrigerated section of a supermarket, and even a ´long life´ version in a jar - and if that is all you have ever tasted, you are in for a big surprise.

The sauces of Mexico - Mancha manteles
The name speaks for itself – mancha manteles is Spanish for table cloth stainer, and this brick red sauce, when spilled on a white table cloth or down the front of a white shirt, can cause very serious damage indeed.

The sauces of Mexico - Salsa Cruda
Salsa Cruda, raw sauce, or Salsa Fresca, fresh sauce – names which could mean anything, but in Mexico, they both refer to one very specific sauce, which is the quintessential and most common of all Mexican salsas

The sauces of Mexico - Salsa Verde Cruda
A raw “salsa”, made from tomatillos, the Mexican green husked tomato, is one of the pillars, and joys, of the Mexican table.

The Spanish influence in Mexican cuisine
The discovery of the Americas resulted in the dissemination throughout Europe of a multitude of hitherto unknown crops. But just as many Mexican foodstuffs crossed the Atlantic and were introduced to Europe, so too did non-American ingredients make their way back in the opposite direction.

The spices of Mexico - Cumin
“Comino” is one of the countless gastronomic immigrants which travelled to Mexico aboard the Spanish galleons and landed on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico - more likely than not in the port of Veracruz, where it made itself very much at home and was willingly absorbed into the local cuisine.

The spices of Mexico - Vanilla
Vanilla is a shy and gentle spice. There is nothing brash or flamboyant about it, and yet its power is great, with a delicately warm, sweet flavour and scent which are deeply evocative, almost hypnotic.

Tomatillo, the Mexican husked tomato
When is a tomato not a tomato? When it is a “tomatillo”, which translates as” little tomato” but does not refer to a tomato as we know it.

Tortas, part of every day Mexican life
Tortas are an institution in Mexico, a part of every day life and an essential constituent of Mexican cuisine – there are even annual festivals in their honour. They are eaten by everybody at any time, and “torterías” are found on virtually every street corner.

Tortillas, the bread of Mexico
Corn tortillas are quintessentially Mexican, intoxicatingly fragrant and utterly addictive. They take centre stage in the national cuisine as the “bread” of Mexico, and no meal is complete without this truly pre-hispanic food which is eaten daily in every household.

UNESCO and the cuisine of Mexico
UNESCO has never included food and cooking in its “intangible cultural heritage” awards, but on 16 November 2010, it bestowed this honour upon Mexican Cuisine, a decision which was greeted with tremendous personal and national excitement and pride.

Xocolatl, the Aztecs´ Food of the Gods
The smooth, velvety, sophisticated chocolate we know today bears no resemblance whatsoever to its Latin American ancestor.