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Mexican
food is at last receiving the recognition it is due with new
restaurants, TV programmes and food holidays all fueling interest.
The real thing is lightyears from Tex-Mex which most people, wrongly,
take as authentic. In Mexico itself a gastronomic revolution has been
hitting the headlines for some time. Top Mexican chefs are reviving
ingredients from prehispanic days and dishes which had only survived
at market-stalls. This food is exciting, avant-garde and unknown to
our 'old world' taste-buds.
Tart little green tomatillos,
smokey chipotle chiles, hoja santa (the 'saintly' leaf), huitlacoche
(a juicy fungus) and an untranslatable herb called epazote - these
are some of Mexico's mysterious yet highly desirable native
ingredients which have been resurrected. Many of them are now
available in the UK, For Viva La Revolución!, Fiona Dunlop
travelled through Mexico seeking out these innovative chefs and
tasting their multi-layered dishes. In the book she describes how the
nueva cocina movement is exotic, layered and jewel-like and as varied
as Mexico's 62 different languages, 50 types of corn and staggering bio-diversity.
From Mexico City to Veracruz,
from Michoacán to Puebla and from Oaxaca to the Yucatán,
Fiona Dunlop profiles 12 chefs at the forefront of Mexican cooking
who reveal the recipes at the heart of this revolution. Backing them
up are sections on market-food where cooks still make classics in
time-honoured ways. Among the recipes you will find inventive new
dishes as well as modern versions of classics. Chillies are big,
while seafood, duck, pork and venison play central roles. Vegetable
dishes are based on black beans, tomatoes, avocados, squash,
courgette blossoms, sweet potatoes, pumpkin seeds and those
extraordinary mole sauces.
Viva la Revolucion! is an
enthralling gastronomic journey that captures the incredible vitality
and colour of this country and the remarkable food of Mexico today.
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