Empanadas are pastry turnovers filled with seasoned meat, crimped shut and baked or fried. They are sold across Latin America and each country has its own shape and filling; this is a Mexican-style baked beef empanada with a picadillo filling. The usual trouble is not the pastry, it is leaking, and every cause of a…
Tostadas are corn tortillas fried or baked flat until rigid, then loaded with layers and eaten like an open sandwich. They are one of the simplest things in this cuisine and the easiest to get slightly wrong, because everything on top of the shell is wet and the shell is the only thing keeping it…
Chilaquiles are fried tortilla chips simmered briefly in salsa and topped with egg, cheese and crema, and they are breakfast across Mexico. The entire dish is a timing problem: the chips have to meet the sauce late enough to stay crisp and early enough to take on flavour. The recipe card carries the full method…
Chile relleno is a roasted poblano stuffed with cheese, coated in a whipped egg batter and shallow fried until the coating puffs golden, served under a thin tomato sauce. It has a reputation for being difficult, and the reputation comes almost entirely from one step: the batter sliding off in the pan. The recipe card…
Pozole is a stew of pork and hominy in a chile broth, finished at the table with a plate of raw garnishes that each person adds themselves. The red version, pozole rojo, is built on dried guajillo and ancho chiles. Two steps separate a clean, deep bowl from a gritty, muddy one, and both are…
Horchata is the pale, cinnamon-scented rice drink served alongside tacos across Mexico, and it is made without cooking anything: raw rice soaks, gets blended, and is strained. Gritty, thin or bland horchata almost always comes from rushing one of those three steps. The recipe card carries the full method with USDA-calculated numbers; this page explains…
Tres leches cake is a sponge soaked in three milks, chilled until the liquid is fully absorbed, and topped with whipped cream. The whole dish turns on one question: how does a cake absorb that much liquid without collapsing into pudding? The answer is in how the sponge is built and when it meets the…
Fish tacos are warm corn tortillas filled with seared white fish, a crisp cabbage slaw and a cool lime crema, and they take about half an hour. Two things decide whether they hold together on the plate: which fish you buy, and when you dress the slaw. The recipe card carries the full method with…
Taco soup is ground beef, beans, corn and tomatoes simmered into a spoonable version of taco night, and it is genuinely a thirty minute, one pot dinner. It is also the kind of recipe that gets dumped together straight from cans, which is how it ends up tasting flat. Two steps fix that, and both…
Chicken enchiladas are corn tortillas rolled around shredded chicken, laid in a dish under red chile sauce and cheese, and baked until the sauce bubbles. The thing that separates a tray that holds its shape from a pan of mush is a step that takes two minutes: the tortillas get a quick dip in hot…
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