'Mexico: The Cookbook' takes you beyond the burrito

Margarita Carrillo Arronte

This is a book I was hoping to find under the Christmas tree but I couldn't wait (or take the chance that it wouldn't be there) so I bought it for myself. For many people, Mexican food begins with tacos and ends with burritos but, as the book shows, the cuisine is much more diverse, colourful and complex.

Chef, restaurateur and culinary instructor Margarita Carrillo Arronte is an authority on Mexican cuisine. Her tome (at more than 700 pages, it qualifies as a tome) gives a brief introduction to what makes Mexican food unique, delving into the geography, history, ingredients, regional variations and the types of meals consumed each day (up to five!). I wish she had given more information about chillies (spelled "chiles" in Mexico) because there are so many varieties. It would have been nice to have photos of each type, the names they go by (because each region might call them something unique and the dried ones have a different name from the fresh), the flavour profile, the type of dishes they're used for and what to substitute if you can't find a specific type.

As to be expected, the first recipe is for masa dough made from masa harina - the packaged flour you mix with water to make corn tortillas. Of course, the best corn tortillas are made from dried corn kernels mixed with calcium hydroxide (to make it more nutritious) then ground into a damp dough before being hand-patted into a flat disc. But, unfortunately, that's impractical in most communities (including Hong Kong) that do not have a large Mexican population.

Many of the recipes will be hard for us to make here (including anything that needs tomatillos, certain varieties of fresh chillies or huitlacoche, which also goes by the unappetising name of "corn smut").