I have never forgotten my very first taste of Mexican food. I was about three, I think, and a friend of my mothers had mailed her some "Mexican" from New Mexico. Back then you couldn't buy so much as a can of refried beans anywhere in New England! Frankly, it wasn't very good. I've never touched canned tamales since. But, my Mother did love Mexican food dearly and of course that influences me even all these years later. I've been cooking my own since I was a teen, back when the only Mexican to be had in all of New England were the tacos at Riverside Park, now Six Flags. Along the way, I've been lucky enough to live in the American Southwest and make a number of friends in the Mexican-American community. I can give you directions to several outstanding Mexican restaurants across the Continental US, but Jared McDaniel, author of Delicious Authentic Mexican Food: Easy Mexican Recipes for Cooking the Perfect Mexican Meal is exactly right when he says that what you make yourself will be better than anything you can buy out - at least most of the time. There still are very few decent Mexican restaurants in New England, so I indulge myself at least several times a week and "Mexican" is by far the largest ethnic section in my huge (600 and counting) library of cookbooks. I figure there is no such thing as too many Mexican cookbooks, so my collection contains more than a few.

As I sit here typing this my kitchen is redolent of chile, beans and chorizo and even though I've just finished a Mexican Pizza dribbled with Jared's Red Sauce, the smell is enough to make my mouth water. Nothing smells better than homemade Red Sauce and Jared's recipe is spot on, though I will admit my Red Sauce is closer to a brown sauce. I used half chile pasilla and half chile ancho because that is what I had handy for dried chile. Yum, yum! I ended up with plenty for several meals and some to freeze. (This could easily be used as Enchilada Sauce and this is likely what I will do with most of it.) The Mexican Pizza - really sort of a flat Navajo Taco - was scrumptious. (I still have some of that sauce on my chin LOL.)

What McDaniel has given us in Delicious Authentic Mexican Food is not really Mexican. Certainly it isn't Mexican haute cuisine, but it is without a doubt what most Americans know as Mexican food - street food really, the stuff of a quick lunch from the taco stand. That doesn't make it any less good. In fact, street food is some of my favorite "Mexican." I'm sure you'll find some of your favorites here too.

Delicious Authentic Mexican Food is pretty nicely put together. There is a picture for nearly every recipe. There is a Table of Contents so you don't have to page through recipe after recipe to get to the one that you want. Jared provides a nice discussion of Mexican ingredients that are commonly found across the US. One feature that I particularly liked is a very nice illustration of the various commonly found fresh chiles along with their name and description. As I recall, none of the rest of my Mexican collection has been thoughtful enough to provide pictures.

I did find a couple of things that might be improved on. For some reason, the Table of Contents does not show up in the Kindle menu. You'll need to click "Beginning" and then turn a page. (This seems to be all too common with Kindle cookbooks.) Some of the recipes start in the middle of a page. My bookmark for the Red Sauce recipe reads "tomatillos and chiles, cover and cook" - the first words on that page - and it would have been very nice if the ingredient listing for Red Sauce in the Mexican Pizza recipe, which reads "Red Sauce (see recipe)", had been turned into a link that took me to the Red Sauce recipe. I do wish that Jared had used fewer canned beans and perhaps given a recipe or two to make your own. Nothing is easier than beans. All in all though, Delicious Authentic Mexican Food is very nicely done. I think you'll enjoy cooking from this one.

Recommended!

This cookbook really hit home for me. I lived in San Diego for MANY years and really was so lucky to come across some of the BEST Mexican cooks ever while there.
This book has some great recipes that anyone can make...they are not difficult, you just follow along and you will be a great Mexican chef in your own kitchen. He also offers something that Ive NOT seen in other E-cookbooks, he has great pictures and explanations of the assorted peppers...and also explains about other items you will be using to cook with....I thought there was a LOT of time and expertise that went into this cookbook, its a keeper in MY kitchen!

This book has some good information on chiles - varieties, what to look for when buying, and handling information. It also has some basic information on other main ingredients used in the cookbook - rice, cheese, etc.

The recipes seem to be clear and straightforward, and I didn't spot any egregious errors.

I can't really address authenticity either way, but I can say that this is the type of recipe I use when I want to cook Mexican food. Some of the recipes are on the edge of "too simple to be a recipe" (such as the nachos one) but the inclusion is logical. I really like that the chicken enchilada recipe has instructions for making a sauce rather than using a canned cream soup.

I would have liked to have seen a couple of recipes for dried beans and/or refried beans - there are some basic instructions, but there are a lot more possibilities than just cooking beans in water.

There are a few typos and grammar errors here and there ("Mesican," "cut in to small pieces,") but not too many and the text is easy to follow.

I think the section at the end giving reasons to cook Mexican food at home would be better suited to the description rather than being included as part of the book, or possibly condensed a bit and included in the introduction. After all, these are selling points, reasons that someone might want to buy the cookbook, rather than text to be read at the end.

I picked this up as a free version for the Kindle and will be keeping it because I don't have a Mexican cookbook as of yet and this has some recipes that aren't in my current individual collection. If you like Mexican food, this probably won't have all the recipes you'll want, but it's a decent ground-level collection and may have some new ideas for someone who's more used to canned red enchilada sauce or fast food tacos.