Eat Smart in Mexico: How to Decipher the Menu, Know the Market Foods & Embark on a Tasting Adventure

While most Mexico guides devote a section to eating, authors Joan and David Peterson see food as an integral part of the journey, the very basis of travel, and their new guide "Eat Smart in Mexico" (1998, Ginkgo Press, $12.95) reflects that sensibility. One of a series that includes Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey, Eat Smart gives a historical survey of Mexican cuisine followed by an overview of each Mexican region, describing its most representative foods, from the North to the Yucatán. We learn, for example, that Michoacan residents eat churipo, a stew made with potatoes and corn and flavored with the sour cactus fruit xoconostle.A recipe section presents essentials like birria, mole poblano and chiles rellenos, as well as more exotic offerings like cheese-stuffed squash blossoms and mezcal sea bass with black bean sauce. The recipes have been provided by a number of restaurant owners, cookbook authors and culinary experts.The most useful section of Eat Smart is its extensive glossary, which is broken down into a menu guide and an ingredients guide. The definitions, written with the gusto of those who are passionate about what they eat, should help readers decipher menus just about anywhere in Mexico. It includes obscure items like codillo enchilmole-pig's knuckles in a black spice paste made of burned chiles, roasted onion and garlic, and juice from the bitter Seville orange, and ayocotes en coloradito-large broad beans in a rich, red, complex sauce of ancho and guajillo chiles, spices, nuts, seeds, raisins and chocolate. Browsing this glossary is certain to whet your appetite to seek out these dishes in the places where they're prepared. -Daniel C. Schecter, Business Mexico

In spite of our having traveled in Mexico many years, and having prepared its cuisine at home as well, we find much to learn from this book. And the authors strike us as folks we would like to meet, and even travel with. Carla and Herb Felsted, co-editors, Mexican Meanderings, A Newsletter of Explorations in an Enchanted Land

Besides containing a brief culinary history of ancient and contemporary Mexico, this very intelligent guide has two sections that are of incredible use to the traveller. "Menu guide" is an encyclopedic translation of hundreds of dishes one will encounter in the menus of Mexican cuisine annotated with phrases such as Regional Classic, National Favorite, etc. "Food and Flavors guide" goes from A la Albanil to Zempasuchil. Take this book with you and you will never be lost in the marketplace or restaurant. Ron Cooper, President, Del Maguey, Ltd. Co., maker of Single Village Mezcal.

Anyone sensible enough to buy a copy before taking off for Mexico will be able to eat really well and even more importantly, to understand what they are eating.-Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, Author of "The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking"

For the adventuresome traveler, this book is a "smart," richly annotated road map that will steer you to the right markets and teach you where to find authentic Mexican food. EAT SMART IN MEXICO offers what is most important about Mexican food and culture wrapped in a nutshell. If you cannot get to Mexico, this book will provide vicarious travel and cooking inspiration of the first order. As in "Eat Smart in Brazil," the Peterson's have succeeded in reaching a middle ground between the practical and the scholarly to unravel some of the best kept secrets of one of the world's most complex cuisines. -Maricel Presilla, Ph.D., Culinary historian and author specializing in the cuisines of Latin America and Spain