This is the second cookbook from Mexico-born and Dallas-based food blogger Mely Martinez. Her blog Mexico in my Kitchen has an impressive following and her debut cookbook was a best seller. Her formula – sharing recipes for the kinds of unpretentious dishes Mexican families enjoy day to day – was initially intended for people with Mexican heritage and minimal cooking skills but has come to resonate with a much broader audience.

Martinez’ first book The Mexican Home Kitchen introduced the fundamentals of Mexican cooking, covering the most popular dishes and techniques for making tortillas, rice, beans and other staples. Her second book continues in a similar instructional vein, expanding the repertoire by adding regional dishes and some common street foods (antojitos). Recipes are easy to follow and are written with inexperienced cooks in mind. Some recipes are quite humble -- hot dog sausages in a spicy sauce; two simple treatments for spaghetti (rojo and verde); a quesadilla filled with ham and cheese – but there are also a handful of more complex recipes for cooks who enjoy more of a challenge.

Compared to writers like Pati Jinich, Rick Bayless or the late Diana Kennedy, who take a more scholarly approach to Mexican cuisine, Martinez is lighter on recipe provenance and culinary history but her books work well as cooking manuals. Recipes are accompanied by colour photos and are accompanied by Notas that explain how to take dishes in different directions, suggest ingredient substitutions, and provide other useful tips.

Mexico in Your Kitchen is divided into seven chapters: Breakfasts; Antojitos; Soups; Main Dishes; Sides, Salsa & Peppers; Desserts & Breads, Drinks. Front and back matter cover Mexican Food Customs; The Mexican Pantry; Tools & Equipment (including useful hacks); a ‘how to’ for Roasting Vegetables and a Recipe Reference listing dishes contained in Martinez’ first book.

All the recipes I tried worked out well and were easy to execute. Martinez describes Huevos con Chorizo (chorizo and eggs) as one of the most useful dishes one can learn to cook and it is certainly one of the simplest. Crumbled chorizo is cooked in a skillet, releasing its bright orange, tasty fat, then eggs are scrambled in the same pan, picking up all that flavour. Similarly scrumptious and easy to whip up is Quesadilla de Jamon, essentially a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with tortillas subbed in for bread.

More elaborate Tilapia Veracruzana (tilapia Veracruz-style) is an excellent illustration of how Spanish and Mexican culinary traditions come together. The fish (traditionally a whole snapper) is cooked in a sauce containing tomatoes, olives, capers, garlic and white wine, seasoned with thyme, marjoram and Mexican oregano. Martinez suggests using easier to find tilapia in place of snapper. It is a mild tasting fish but takes on a vibrant personality given the Veracruzana treatment.

Pescado al Mojo de Ajo (Garlic Fish Fillets) is another classic Mexican dish, dressing the fish with a simple sauce of garlic sautéed in oil. It is quite straightforward to prepare, as long as you don’t let the thinly sliced garlic get too brown or it will turn bitter. I rescued it just in time!

Moros con Cristianos (Black Beans and Rice) is a popular side dish eaten throughout Latin America. Martinez’ version is extra tasty because she adds Mexican oregano and cumin to the traditional seasonings of onion and garlic. Her take on ‘Moors and Christians’ received rave reviews when I served it to family.

Espagueti Verde (green spaghetti) is a delightfully simple dish of spaghetti coated in a creamy sauce based on roasted poblano peppers. It has a gorgeous jade green colour and a mildy spicy taste -- perfect comfort food with a little extra kick.

Roasted poblano peppers also provide a spicy base note for Papas con Rajas y Crema, a spritely side dish of diced potatoes with strips (rajas) of roasted poblano, sautéed onions and Mexican crema. I liked Martinez’ suggestion of adding a jalapeño pepper for an extra dose of chile heat. Notas like this one, suggesting ways to take dishes in different directions, follow many recipes, making each a mini lesson in technique and/or an opportunity to expand one’s repertoire.

Creamy Chipotle Chicken, says Martinez, is a modern dish that has become a staple in many Mexican households. Its secret is a rich sauce that comes together in minutes using canned chipotle chiles, chicken stock, milk and cream. It’s a “secret weapon” kind of dish -- fancy enough for a dinner party but requiring minimal effort or fuss. I made it twice and suspect it will become part of my regular rotation, especially as the sauce can also be used with shrimp or pasta.

Frijoles Puercos is an indulgent mix of pureed pinto beans, chorizo and cheese that can be served as a side dish or as an appetizer, with tortilla chips for dipping. It’s traditionally made with lard but Martinez suggests butter as a substitute, an addition I felt was hardly needed in a dish that is already so rich with cheese and sausage.

I finished on a high note with Beef Shank Stew, which turns an inexpensive cut of meat into a luxurious dish with a ton of flavour. Beef shank (Osso Buco in Italian) has a core of marrow that yields its richness in a long, slow cooking process. Martinez suggests using a instant pot for the first stage of cooking, cutting the time down sufficiently to make this feasible as a weeknight dish. With the addition of carrots, potatoes, olives, raisins, capers and white wine, it is deeply savoury. My leftovers developed even deeper flavours after resting in the fridge overnight.

The majority of recipes in Mexico in Your Kitchen can also be found on Martinez’ blog so there is little reason to buy the book if you are happy cooking from recipes on a digital device. I am not, and I am grateful for my hard copy of this book, which is now peppered with post-it notes marking more dishes I want to try. Mexico in Your Kitchen is not an encyclopedic work on Mexican cuisine but within the parameters of what this cookbook sets out to do, I couldn’t fault it.

There is something for every occasion, whether it's breakfast, lunch, dessert, etc. This way you can get a great insight into Mexican cuisine, especially if you haven't had any contact with Mexican food yet. The dishes are well explained and the photos make you hungry.

I enjoy cooking and I love eating Mexican food. Growing up reading wahacca and watching her show on the food network primed me to enjoy this book by a new author. Another fabulous cookery writer with a book that’s beautifully edited and food that’s deliciously photographed.

A good, competent Mexican cookbook written by a Mexican which is important. Martinez has built a deserved following off the back of her delicious, reliable recipes and stories and this book continues in a similar vein. It is an ideal cookbook for beginners or more experienced cooks.

First of all, I really love the book cover! It's simple, easy on the eyes and very pretty. The layout of each page, as well as, the recipes are clear and easy to understand.

I loved this cookbook. Mexican is not something I cook at home. Well not before this cookbook. Now I feel like I can make these delicious recipes! Terrific, well written recipes with easily accessible ingredients.

This cookbook is gorgeous with photos for every recipe (as I believe cookbooks should have!) I want to make almost every recipe. The recipes I don’t want to make are only because of my allergies to bananas and yeast. I’m thinking about buying a copy and checking out her previous book.

Whilst I don’t tend to eat a lot of Mexican food ,mainly due to my lack of knowledge about the subject, I really enjoyed reading this book. Good photography and lots of new ideas of dishes to try. I look forward to trying to create lots of them in future. It’s certainly broadened my knowledge of delicious looking Mexican dishes.

I found this to be an excellent cookbook that had everything from sweet bread, soups, drinks, salsas, main dishes, and just so much more. Everything on these pages was filled with easy-to-follow instructions, pictures were excellent as well along with the different stories that went along with some of the different recipes. Having married into a Hispanic family over 45 years ago I did find that some of the recipes in this book were like the ones handed down to my wife from her grandmother and that the recipe for bread pudding ( Capirotada) was made the same way as my wife's grandmother which I had never seen before. Overall an excellent book and one worth having.

I am a huge fan of Mexican food and when the opportunity to review a book I’m on top of that well kind of I read it but failed to write this review sooner then well now. I found this book was full of recipes from appetizer all the way up to the desserts…..Yummm desserts, oh yeah there was also drink recipes and salsa recipes which one day I am going to have to dig into this cookbook and test some of those out especially the salsa my husband loves salsa. At this point in need life to slow down a bit before I can start having some cooking and baking fun.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was that the author included the origins of the dish it’s always fun to learn new things about where they came from and the history behind them. I work with a Hispanic lady and I love hearing her stories and history about where she is from and how things are made there is very interesting to me because each person has a different story and different way of doing things. Honestly I am guessing it all depends on what part of Mexico you come from and how you were raised different areas different cultures. That is where this book play in on my interest and of course my love for Mexican food.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to review this book even though I epically fail at this part.

This book was lovely and had so many amazing recipes. What was better was the quality of the imagery and writing. The original one felt more like an art book than a cookbook and I expect the quality of this one in print will be the same. Recipes are easy to follow and the writing is engaging. it tells a wonderful story throughout the pages beyond just the delicious recipes.

This is a very nice cookbook on Mexican recipes, but I just did not feel it stand out with anything and I admit I wanted to see a bit more of the promised focus on community and culture and tradition. I wanted to find tidbits throughout the book about celebrating gathering togethers with friends and families. And if I am honest, I wanted better pictures too.

But overall it's a pretty good cookbook and I already saved some recipes to recreate.

A very well done recipe book, and that's no pun intended regarding cooking times. It's well done because you know where you are – there is no chance of flopping it open to find a picture of some random vegetables, or soft-focus family life around the kitchen bar. No, beyond the decent introductions and guides to the basic staples, we just get the recipes – the regional specialities, the dishes unique to feast days or for specific times of the day, that the creator's first volume didn't cover in its more basic outlook.

The blurb for each dish might go on a smidge, but it's useful to know where dishes were originating from and why, and it rarely pushes the recipe on to a second side of text. And there is always space for the author's 'notas', the tips, storage advice, substitutions and so on. That is helped by the simplicity of much of this – the ingredients list might be a touch long, but that's rare, and the amount of steps for the recipe is pretty commonly on the lower side, in honour of the humble beginnings of the dishes. The photos manage to brightly sell the courses, not because they have some connection to some Michelin or pompous cuisine ideas, but because they are what regular people routinely enjoy en famille, and nobody has ever needed to tart things up.

You still don't, even with the brace of books, become a master of encyclopaedic Mexicana knowledge – one example, more or less at random, is that here you just get the one, basic, picadillo recipe, leaving all the regional quirks for another day perhaps. But to this article's credit it got me back into the swing of saving recipes for later – a simple winter soup of black bean and chorizo, and the Veracruz-style tilapia for the other end of the year. It had been months since I'd snaffled recipes in such a way from reviewing cookbooks, and it took something like this, with its wonderfully no-nonsense approach married to universal appeal, to get me doing it again.

Now, it would have been a fair bit different if I had been interested in a dish that relies on a recipe from said first book – it seems a bonkers way around, of seemingly demanding the first on your shelf in case the same thing crops up slightly differently here. It's not to reduce overlap, it's to get a few more sales of the earlier volume. But on the whole that might become a minor quibble – if that older book was half as good as this it was fine indeed. For my tastes this text to hand deserved four and a half stars.

This book has a wonderful variety of recipes and sauces to try. I love the stories and especially the use of photos. That makes it so much easier when trying a recipe if I know how the end result should look. Things like homemade chorizo is a labor of love but so worth the time. I like the mix of easy quick recipes along with some that take a little more time.

This comprehensive collection of Mexican staple dishes is presented with straightforward instructions, colorful photos and useful preparation tips. Great cookbook!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. I can wait to dig in and try these recipes! The photos of each recipe were great.

A book full of traditional Mexican family recipes from all parts of Mexico. I look forward to sharing some of these with my nuera this summer when she visits from Cabo San Lucas. Excellent!

I love this cookbook!! Mexican food is my favorite and I definitely will try any dish once. Love the recipes, some brand new, some not.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Mexican food has been trendy for decades, and many cooks aren’t sure how to duplicate it at home. Mely Martinez shows how in her cookbook, Mexico in Your Kitchen: Favorite Mexican Recipes That Celebrate Family, Community, Culture, and Tradition. If you’re looking for the mundane, same-old, same-old Mexican dishes, you can just visit Del Taco or Taco Bell, but if you want unique and delicious Mexican dishes that will please everyone, you’ll want to check out this excellent cookbook.

The recipes are laid out in the traditional manner with the ingredients listed first, followed by step-by-step instructions that make it easy for anyone – beginners to advanced – to prepare these dishes with picture-perfect and delicious results. The book is filled with recipes for not-so-well-know Mexican dishes such as Chiloria, Encremadas, Tortitas De Papa, Enmoladas, and other specialties. There is a section on cooking with mole paste, and several mouthwatering desserts. There are also some recipes for classic favorites such as Tacos al pastor (a favorite), and Queso Fundido. There is something for everyone in this cookbook.

One of the best aspects of this cookbook is that it contains beautiful, professional photographs of most of the dishes. It will make cooks want to make every recipe in the book. There are recipes for seafood, meats, poultry, breads, desserts, appetizers, sauces, salsas, and condiments; most are easy.
All told, this is an excellent and unique Mexican cookbook. It is a cut above many that are available, and it is an excellent choice to add to the cookbook shelf.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Mexico in Your Kitchen is great! If you are looking for great recipes with some flair, this is the book for you. I tried a lot of the recipes and everyone that I tried was so good. I recommend this book to anyone looking for something different to add to their menu. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I am leaving this review on my own and is my own opinion.
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