Notes about Recipes in this book

• Chicken tinga - pulled chicken with a smoky tomato sauce (Tinga de pollo)

  • FJT on April 11, 2021

    Easy to make especially as I pressure cooked the chicken (20 mins at high pressure) and it almost pulled itself as I lifted it out of the pressure cooker! The sauce is extremely spicy; I used canned chipotles in adobo and used the lowest amount stated in the recipe and it was still quite spicy. Enjoyed it but it wasn't memorable. I agree that getting the extra chicken stock to freeze is a bonus.

  • Ro_ on May 09, 2020

    This was pretty easy to make! It gave me very saucy, smoky, spicy pulled chicken which I used served with tortillas to make wraps. I added some sugar and quite a bit of extra salt at the end of cooking to get the seasoning right. I also found it needed to sit and cool for at least 10-15 minutes before serving. Overall this was a different type of Mexican dish than I would usually have (rather than grilling chicken/beef for fajitas) and while I wouldn't say it was world-changing I'd definitely make it again for a change. The fact that I got a pint of chicken stock out of it for future use is also a plus.

• Clementine, almond & olive oil cake

  • joneshayley on January 05, 2019

    Moist easy and aromatic. One of my favourite cakes for dinner parties

• Pico de gallo salsa

  • joneshayley on January 05, 2019

    A nice basic salsa, made better by blackening the garlic and tomatoes before chopping. Goes well with the sweet potato and Chorizo quesadilla from the same book

• Butterflied grilled bass with green and red salsas (Pescado a la talla)

  • joneshayley on May 26, 2019

    The red salsa is brilliant, the green is nice but not as punchy. A very eye catching beautiful dish

• Turkey breast with pasilla & chipotle chilli & butter sauce

  • joneshayley on January 05, 2019

    This is absolutely beautiful- scaled down and made with chicken, the sauce has such a rounded balanced flavour- spicy, sweet, depth that penetrates the meat. I’ll make this again and again, and will definitely try it with a whole turkey breast next time

• Quesadillas with sweet potatoes, chorizo & sweetcorn (Quesadillas de chorizo, elote y camote)

  • joneshayley on January 05, 2019

    Very good- better with corn tortillas, worth the challenge frying for the extra taste. Sweet potato and chorizo take a while to properly brown.

  • JJ2018 on September 13, 2021

    We were using precooked chorizo so need to allow time for sweet potato to soften before adding otherwise it will overcook. Very tasty we would make again

• Chicken burritos with pico de gallo salsa (Burritos de pollo)

  • joneshayley on January 05, 2019

    Great recipe-fast (after marinade) and the flavours really penetrate the chicken.

  • sarahj22 on September 21, 2019

    I adore this recipe and it's now on my regular rotation. The marinade for the chicken is delicious and doesn't suffer much from using bottled lime juice to save time. I pop the chicken and marinade under a hot grill rather than pan-frying as you still get a lovely colour. With the accompaniments of little gem, salsa and guacamole it feels very fresh and healthy. I swap the sour cream / mayo combination in the chipotle crema for low fat Greek yogurt to make it a little less indulgent, and have also had success making it veggie by swapping the chicken for cauliflower. It's always a hit with guests and I've been asked for the recipe at least three times.

  • Ro_ on January 26, 2020

    This was delicious, went down really well with the family. Not too complicated to make, just need to go through all the components methodically. I used 700g boned chicken thigh, which was more than enough (a little too much) for 9 burritos, since there is so much other stuff to fit in there as well, and doubled the quanities for the guac/salsa/crema/rice/mozza. Omitted the sour cream, don't think it's necessary with the guac/crema/mozza. Actually I don't think all the rice was necessary, next time I'd reduce or else possibly do dirty rice or add some flavour to it. Note to self: would be good to keep the chicken and rice warm somehow, as they ended up very cold towards the end of the meal.

• Tortilla soup with chipotle chilli, tomato & avocado (Sopa Azteca)

  • joneshayley on January 05, 2019

    Brilliant soup- such depth of flavour and made great by the garnishes.

• Char-grilled beef tacos with spring onions & guacamole (Tacos de carne asado)

  • Ro_ on June 30, 2020

    Delicious flavours, especially the char-grill on the beef. I also served with some grated cheese. I used basse cote steaks, which in retrospect were not quite tender enough so made the tacos a little chewy and hard to eat: next time I'd use a more tender cut.

• Guacamole

  • Ro_ on February 04, 2021

    A very nice guac recipe.

• Roasted red tomato & chilli salsa

  • Ro_ on May 31, 2020

    Very good salsa recipe, I mostly make this for using with the various recipes in the book rather than as a standalone dip. I've tried both blitzing it up in a food processor and using a pestle and mortar, and the latter method is by far superior. It ends up too watery in the food processor and loses all its lovely texture.

• Stuffed ancho chillies with goat's cheese & tomato sauce (Chile ancho relleno de queso de cabra)

  • Ro_ on February 04, 2021

    An unusual dish. I made two chillies per person and served as a main course with some coriander & lime rice. The cheese inside the chillies was great, and made a good contrast with the smokiness of the chillies themselves and the tomato sauce. However for me there was something lacking to really elevate the dish - it needed a bit of sweetness (I'd consider sweetening the sauce) and maybe a bit more acidity, eg some fresh lime squeezed over. My partner really enjoyed this, but I'm not sure I'll repeat it.

• Chopped salad from La Scala

  • Ro_ on May 20, 2020

    This was an absolutely delicious salad. I made pretty much the full quantity but with less salami, half the chickpeas and half the iceberg lettuce, to feed three hungry people as the sole dinner dish. I wouldnt tweak a thing, and will definitely make this again. A great dinner for a hot May evening.

• Char-grilled aubergine & feta rolls

  • Ro_ on October 02, 2019

    This was the second time I made these, and they weren't as great as I remembered. Last time I made them then served/ate them immediately, this time I prepared in advance and left them in the fridge for a few hours - I think probably they're best served slightly warm still. Also I think the nutmeg is too overpowering - it's a flavour I don't love at the best of times, so maybe next time I'd leave it out completely.

• Courgette salad (Ensalada de calabaza)

  • Ro_ on January 27, 2021

    Nice, but be careful not to burn the garlic - can happen very quickly. I'm not sure I loved this dish enough to repeat even so, but the dressing was certainly good.

• Chicken enchiladas with salsa verde (Enchiladas verdes)

  • Ro_ on December 22, 2020

    Living a long way away from the Americas, I first discovered Mexican food through the Old El Paso meal kits you can buy in the supermarkets here to make fajitas, tacos, burritos and enchiladas. Now these days, I totally shun these kits in favour of better, more authentic, infinitely more delicious fajita, burrito and taco recipes - many from this very book. But when it comes to enchiladas...damnit, there's just something about that Old El Paso meal kit that I just prefer to every other enchilada recipe I've tried. This one included. Now I didn't have quite enough tomatillos for the salsa so I had to bulk out with a couple of red tomatoes, but that was neither here or there. It's the fact of rolling them up, absolutely dousing them in sauce and cheese and baking them in the oven so it all goes a bit crispy and cheesy and delicious. I will have to search for more enchilada recipes to try to reconcile myself to the authentic version: this one was "nice" but not good enough.

• Ranch-style eggs (Huevos rancheros)

  • Ro_ on May 16, 2020

    Very nice huevos rancheros recipe. I can rarely get black beans here, so I used red kidney beans to make the refried beans, which is fine. The salsa sauce has a nice texture and consistency but maybe isn't the best-tasting sauce ever, there was a slightly bitter edge to it. However, it does come together quickly, which is a plus.

• Divorced eggs (Huevos divorciados)

  • Ro_ on June 05, 2020

    I love huevos rancheros but had been putting off making huevos divorciados because a) tomatillos are hard to source here and b) it's a bit of the faff in the morning making two different salsas. But I finally found tomatillos and just did it, and the results were great. Actually my salsa verde came out a little brown, probably because I used a red onion in it. But I loved the tangy, sour taste of it, in fact I preferred it to the salsa ranchero. I need to make a big batch of the refried beans and the two salsas and then freeze them in the portions required for the dish, so that I can make this breakfast more often with less faff.

• Flour tortillas (Tortillas de harina)

  • Ro_ on October 21, 2020

    I tried making my own tortillas once before and found it pretty stressful, so abandoned the idea in favour of buying ready made ones for years. Until I decided I wanted to make burritos and had no tortillas in stock, so thought I'd give this recipe a go. Taste-wise, they came out absolutely delicious, it's hard to say why but they were definitely superior to bought tortillas - I think it's that fresh-off-the-grill taste. However, as before I found rolling them out difficult (hard to get them in perfect circles and then hard to scrape them up and transfer them into a pan) and ultimately they came out too crispy and not pliable enough. Maybe I cooked them for too long. I'd really like a way to make tortillas that I could do in advance, not have to do at the last minute when I'm trying to bring everything else together...

• Corn tortillas (Tortillas de maiz)

  • Ro_ on January 31, 2021

    Well at least I can say I tried, but these were a disaster! I specifically ordered the right kind of flour online and followed the recipe/instructions precisely. I don't have a tortilla press, so I used the suggestion of rolling between two sheets of plastic. But these just didn't hold together at all, it was practically impossible to get them off the plastic and into the pan without them just disintegrating. I tried adding more flour, which helped a little bit but not enough to make a significant enough difference. I eventually managed to get a couple of thick, shapeless splodges of tortilla mix into the frying pan, but the texture was just all wrong and they weren't soft and pliant at all. Thank god I had bought a pack of ready made corn tortillas as backup!

• Beef barbacoa with chipotle, garlic & oregano (Barbacoa de res)

  • Ro_ on May 31, 2020

    I used a 1kg "paleron de bouef", which wasn't fully defrosted in the middle when I started the cooking process, but 3 and a bit hours in the oven at 140 fan was still fine - it could maybe have benefitted from the full four hours to get it even more falling-apart-and-tender. I loved the flavours of this, I served it exactly as suggested but skipped the pickled jalapenos as I didn't have any. Really popular with the family, and handy because it can all be prepped ahead of time.

• Carne con chile

  • Ro_ on October 18, 2020

    I was intrigued to see whether I'd prefer this to a more "normal" chile con carne with ground beef. The flavours were delicious, but somehow texturally it wasn't quite what I wanted. I think maybe next time I'd cook it for longer than 2 hours and then try to shred the beef with two forks. The taste was very very rich, and definitely needs the accompaniments suggested (cheese, avocado etc) plus lime juice and coriander for a zing.

• Lamb, pasilla & tomato stew (Birria)

  • Ro_ on November 09, 2020

    Delicious stew, tender, smoky meat that was falling apart and lovely flavours in the sauce. I think it needs lots of zingy things to go with it because it's so very rich: I served with coriander, lime and feta but I think some guac and maybe even salsa would have been nice too.

• Pork with black beans (Frijol con puerco)

  • Ro_ on November 30, 2020

    This is quite a plain tasting pork stew on its own, it's really the chilomate sauce that brings it to life, plus all the other accompaniments. I was serving with tortillas, so I cooked the pork for longer than stated and shredded it up a bit with forks at the end. Overall I liked this fine, but I think it's one I'm unlikely to repeat as there are more flavourful recipes for this type of dish.

• Mac 'n' cheese - macaroni cheese with smoky bacon

  • Ro_ on March 07, 2020

    Delicious recipe, I'll be making again. Don't skimp on the amount of bechamel/cheese sauce: more is definitely more here.

• Raw tuna tostadas (Tostadas de atún)

  • Ro_ on November 17, 2019

    These were so, so good. I couldn't get small corn tortillas, so I bought big ones and cut 3x tostadas out of each. Followed the recipe pretty much exactly, except I used chipotle paste instead of chipotles en adobo in the chipotle crema, and since we were eating these as finger food I drizzled the chipotle crema over the tostadas rather than serving it on the side. Everybody absolutely loved these, the balance of flavours was perfect. The meaty yet fresh tuna with the creamy guac, acid lime, crunchy tostada and spicy chipotle was a winning combination. I'll definitely be remaking.

• Hog Island oysters with a chilli, coriander & lime dressing

  • Ro_ on December 26, 2020

    This simple little dressing was one of the stars of our Christmas meal! Living in France, oysters are a traditional part of the Christmas table, and I thought I'd give this dressing a go for a change. I had to use cider vinegar instead of rice vinegar, and red chillies instead of jalapeno, but otherwise stuck to the recipe. It's kind of like a sweet, zingier version of the classic shallot-vinegar dressing you tend to get with oysters here, and everyone loved it. Will make again.

• Lime & chicken soup (Sopa de lima)

  • Ro_ on December 17, 2020

    My first time trying this kind of soup, I was taken aback by just how lime-y it is! I think it needs a good whack of salt to bring some of the other flavours out a bit. I really liked the fried tortilla (I overcooked mine ever so slightly, very easy to do as it's a matter of seconds between golden and dark brown) and avocado on the top - I think these elements are really essential to the dish. This was an interesting recipe, I wouldn't say I fell in love with it but I'd be interested to try some different variations on it.

• A red stew of chicken with ancho chillies, pumpkin seeds & tomato (Pipian rojo)

  • Ro_ on January 25, 2021

    Lots to like about this hearty, flavourful chicken stew. The only thing is that there was a strange taste which I believe must have been either the ground pumpkin seeds or the maize flour - I suspect the latter. I think I perhaps made an error by not measuring out the 50g of flour, I just guesstimated a few heaped tablespoons which in hindsight was probably too much. The texture was fine but there was a slightly unpleasant note in the stew. Anyway, with some sour creme and cheese added, it was still delicious.

• Mexican-style corn on the cob with chilli & mayo (Elotes)

  • JJ2018 on October 08, 2021

    This was delicious and would definitely make again, very similar to lots of recipes of the same type but a great mix of flavour

• Prawn empanadas (Empanadas de camarón)

  • Mastercheffelix on April 06, 2021

    A really nice meal, but can go wrong easy. I really recommend it!