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Bayless, popular Chicago chef and author (Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen, etc.), jumps on the “everyday food” wagon with this lively collection of recipes designed to take no more than 30 minutes to prepare. Known for his painstaking approach to recreating the classics of Mexican cuisine, Bayless moves in a new direction here, substituting easy-to-find ingredients for exotic ones, streamlining complex sauces into a few steps and emphasizing nutrition. Purists may balk when they encounter more boneless chicken breasts than lard—not to mention a cheerful reliance on canned beans and peppers and, in a pinch, prepared salsas—but any time-pressed home cook will welcome this pragmatic approach to the complexities of Mexican food. Bayless’s confident, step-by-step recipes lead even the novice through a variety of twists on tacos and enchiladas, staples like tortilla soup and guacamole, and more ambitious dishes such as Grilled Red Chile Steak with Sweet Plantains, Red Onion and Chipotle Salsa. Even the notoriously complex mole tradition is reinvented with the foolproof Chicken in Oaxacan Yellow Mole. This companion volume to the fourth season of Bayless’s PBS series Mexican One Plate at a Time will rescue any Mexican food fan who’s ever been daunted by the prospect of serving more than chips and salsa. Photos. (Nov. 7)
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From Booklist
His base of operations may be far north of the border, but Chicago’s Rick Bayless has earned his title as the country’s number-one apostle of Mexican cuisine. His newest book seeks to offer the home cook practical advice in serving authentic Mexican dishes quickly without having them delivered from a restaurant. The dishes Bayless presents generally use standard ingredients available in stores that serve Hispanic populations, now nearly universal in the U.S. A potato salad substitutes sweet potatoes and watercress for novel taste and texture. A large number of main-dish salads offer lighter alternatives to traditional entrees. Simple tacos, enchiladas, and tostadas bring familiar tastes to the table. Bayless offers one recipe for a torta, a Mexican sandwich. Desserts use fresh fruit as a base. Befitting the Mexican origins of these dishes, Bayless uses a wide variety of chiles, especially the deeply flavorful poblano. With virtually every recipe in the book, Bayless adds “riffs” that offer imaginative variations on the main recipe’s techniques. Mark Knoblauch
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