My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions [A Cookbook]
My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions [A Cookbook] book cover

My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions [A Cookbook]

Hardcover – April 30, 2019

Price
$21.49
Format
Hardcover
Pages
368
Publisher
Lorena Jones Books
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0399580574
Dimensions
8.28 x 1.16 x 11.26 inches
Weight
3.55 pounds

Description

“Cámara’s simple yet thorough instructions make home cooks feel as though she’s right next to them, talking over a cutting board about technique and the importance of sustainable, fresh ingredients. From tricks for maximizing flavors while saving money to instructions on navigating Mexican cuisines, Cámara makes this book feel like a mini-encyclopedia on Mexican food. And with personal stories woven throughout, readers will sense Cámara’s love and passion for the food. With its comprehensive approach, My Mexico City Kitchen will empower enthusiastic home cooks with the knowledge and skills to adapt Mexican cuisine on their own.” —Eater “Cámara’s delightful cookbook offers a nuanced window into the evolving cuisine of Mexico City and beyond.” — Publishers Weekly “I’m psyched about this book not just because I’ll be able to impress friends and internet strangers with what I'm sure will be my extremely imposter version of Gabriela Camara's signaturexa0red-and-green grilled snapper, but also because it’ll provide more insight into how she thinks as a cook (and a person!).” — Julia Kramer , Bon Appétit “Gabriela Cámara’s sense of place infuses every aspect of her cooking.xa0Her food is bold, beautiful, approachable, and, most of all, insanely craveable.xa0And now with My Mexico City Kitchen she generously brings you into her kitchen.” —Nicole Krasinski, chef and co-owner of State Bird Provisions and The Progress “This super-personal book lets us in on the magical mind and mission that have given us two of my favorite restaurants—Contramar and Cala. Gabriela Cámara’s passion for the lush, fresh, and bold flavors of her home country of Mexico bursts from these pages and her detailed recipes give us all a chance to bring her delicious food into our own homes.” —Suzanne Goin, chef and co-owner of Lucques, a.o.c., and Tavern “As a fellow female chef and entrepreneur, Gabriela Cámara’s culinary career stands out to me as one of great authenticity and passion. Her devotion to her food, staff, and community resonates throughout her restaurants, filling them with an ethos of family that is felt by each and every person who enters.” —Melissa Perello, chef-owner of Frances and Octavia “Gabriela Cámara brings tradition and innovation together in recipes that are familiar yet original, simple but sophisticated. I can hear her saying ‘you must try this!’ as I read her recipes and I agree— you must.” —Elisabeth Prueitt, co-founder of Tartine Manufactory and Tartine Bakery “This book brings me back to the first time I ate at Contramar, and the radical simplicity of Gabriela Cámara’s grilled whole fish: superbly fresh, adorned with red and green salsas, and served family-style with a stack of freshly made tortillas. Cámara is a beautifully intuitive cook and keen observer of flavor, but her cooking is about so much more than just tasty and inspiring food. Cámara’s restaurants are gathering places that celebrate the deep importance of sustainability as well as the culture, creativity, and diversity of Mexico City. These are the powerful and delicious messages delivered to you with every organic corn tortilla.” —Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse and founder of The Edible Schoolyard Project Gabriela Cámara is the chef-owner of Mexico City's most famous and trafficked restaurant, Contramar, and its sister restaurant, Cala, in San Francisco. Mentored by Diana Kennedy, Cámara has become internationally recognized as the leader of accessible yet sophisticated Mexican cooking. She has appeared in every major American newspaper and food magazine. In 2016, Cala was named one of Bon Appétit' s 50 Best New Restaurants, Food & Wine 's Restaurant of the Year, and a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation's award for Best New Restaurant.xa0In 2020, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Malena Watrous has worked as a recipe tester for Melissa Clark and written about food, books, and travel for the New York Times, Allure, Condé Nast Traveler and Salon . The author of the novel If You Follow Me , she leads the Online Writer's Studio at Stanford University, where she teaches fiction and food writing.

Features & Highlights

  • The innovative chef and culinary trend-setter named one of
  • Time
  • ’s 100 most influential people in the world shares 150 recipes for her vibrant, simple, and sophisticated contemporary Mexican cooking.
  • IACP AWARD FINALIST • ART OF EATING PRIZE LONGLIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE SEASON BY
  • The New York Times
  • Bon Appétit
  • San Francisco Chronicle
  • Chicago Tribune
  • Inspired by the flavors, ingredients, and flair of culinary and cultural hotspot Mexico City, Gabriela Cámara's style of fresh-first, vegetable-forward, legume-loving, and seafood-centric Mexican cooking is a siren call to home cooks who crave authentic, on-trend recipes they can make with confidence and regularity. With 150 recipes for Basicos (basics), Desayunos (breakfasts), Primeros (starters), Platos Fuertos (mains), and Postres (sweets), Mexican food-lovers will find all the dishes they want to cook—from Chilaquiles Verdes to Chiles Rellenos and Flan de Cajeta—and will discover many sure-to-be favorites, such as her signature tuna tostadas. More than 150 arresting images capture the rich culture that infuses Cámara's food and a dozen essays detail the principles that distinguish her cooking, from why non-GMO corn matters to how
  • everything
  • can be a taco.With celebrated restaurants in Mexico City and San Francisco, Cámara is the most internationally recognized figure in Mexican cuisine, and her innovative, simple Mexican food is exactly what home cooks want to cook.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(436)
★★★★
25%
(182)
★★★
15%
(109)
★★
7%
(51)
-7%
(-51)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Nice presentation, bad fundamentals

This cookbook is flashy but lacks the fundamental characteristic of an exceptional cookbook: exceptional recipes. It's good for introducing you to various ingredients and flavor combinations of pan-Mexican cuisine, if you are a beginner. But no single recipe is a show-stopper. Even the recipes that are analogous to what is served at Contramar seem off. But the single most unforgivable aspect of this cookbook is the lack of editing, or recipe testing. Various recipes call for ingredients that are never referenced in the instructions.

As someone who has used many cookbooks in the past couple of years, I've come to learn that if you want to get a sense of the quality of a cookbook, try making one of the baked goods. The reason is that baking is a process that requires very precise ingredient amounts, prep instructions, and baking times, so a cookbook that can help you execute this to perfection is one that has strong fundamentals. I made the anise rolls from this cookbook and they were a flop--and I'm not an inexperienced baker. Same with the chocoflan--the instructions messed up even some of the most basic ingredient-to-receptacle ratios. I will still try to make my own adjustments , as I have with other recipes in this book, but I highly doubt that all of the recipes were tested prior to publishing, which to me is unacceptable.
98 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Nice presentation, bad fundamentals

This cookbook is flashy but lacks the fundamental characteristic of an exceptional cookbook: exceptional recipes. It's good for introducing you to various ingredients and flavor combinations of pan-Mexican cuisine, if you are a beginner. But no single recipe is a show-stopper. Even the recipes that are analogous to what is served at Contramar seem off. But the single most unforgivable aspect of this cookbook is the lack of editing, or recipe testing. Various recipes call for ingredients that are never referenced in the instructions.

As someone who has used many cookbooks in the past couple of years, I've come to learn that if you want to get a sense of the quality of a cookbook, try making one of the baked goods. The reason is that baking is a process that requires very precise ingredient amounts, prep instructions, and baking times, so a cookbook that can help you execute this to perfection is one that has strong fundamentals. I made the anise rolls from this cookbook and they were a flop--and I'm not an inexperienced baker. Same with the chocoflan--the instructions messed up even some of the most basic ingredient-to-receptacle ratios. I will still try to make my own adjustments , as I have with other recipes in this book, but I highly doubt that all of the recipes were tested prior to publishing, which to me is unacceptable.
98 people found this helpful
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Disappointing and Confusing

As other reviewers have said, this book suffers from terrible/non-existent kitchen testing. The ingredient proportions are just plain wrong - the "Mexican lasagna" called for so much sauce the dish resembles a soup, the Pork-and-Corn soup called for such vast quantities of corn that it overwhelmed the other ingredients. Recipes also seemed to be habitually underseasoned. If you have your wits about you to correct the proportions and season it yourself, the recipes can be good - but that's a big if. For someone like me, who was attempting to learn the cuisine, this book was more hindrance than help.
41 people found this helpful
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You really want to test your skills of mexican cooking get this book!

Where do I even begin with this book? I will admit I have not known about Chef Camara very long but dived right into what she does and came away like a kid on Christmas in anticipation to get this book. I had a strong feeling Gabriela would deliver and she did. This book is very well written and put together. There are so many recipes that I cannot wait to make. The one that I will make by this weekend is the Camote A Las Brasas Con Salsa Negra Y Tuetano aka charred sweet potatoes. The Chiles Rellenos Con Frijoles Refritos Y Queso is another recipe I will knock out by this weekend. Too many Salsa's to even talk about that I look forward to. Going to make the Mezcal margarita tonight with all the Mezcal's I have as I watch the Warriors win game 2. I hope you see this review Gabriela and get the opportunity to meet you one day. Good luck on your political adventures ahead back in Mexico City. Thank you for sharing these wonderful recipes and look forward to becoming a better Mexican chef.
28 people found this helpful
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Recipes are incorrect

I was very excited about this book. But unfortunately too many recipes are unclear or flat-out incorrect. Or filler (looking at you, potato leek soup).

She suggests cooking pork carnitas on low for 1.5 hrs then cranking to med-high for another 1.5 hours. If I wasn’t paying close attention and didn’t pull this off the heat, I would have burnt a beautiful 3 lb pork butt...and maybe my house (especially since she says you don’t need to watch it very long).

Other recipes are incorrect as well. Roasting peppers in a skillet for two minutes over medium heat will effectively pepper spray your entire house.

Just go to Rick Bayless’s website for free versions of the same recipes with no fuss.
17 people found this helpful
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Gracias, next.

There is always excitement in my kitchen when a new cookbook arrives, I am a bibliomaniac with an affinity for cookbooks. Finding which recipe to try first and making an ingredient list is the tradition. The recipes in this book are a little off, and I grew up in a family who cooks Mexican for a living. All the math and science I take at school I can follow recipes from a book or from the Taco lady on the corner, and I still found some of the recipes difficult to follow and a bit confusing. I cook to relax even when a recipe calls for 20 ingredients, I find joy in sourcing and prepping, but when you prep and there are leftover ingredients that were never used, or told how to use, it becomes a kin to trying to build an Ikea cabinet with 2 left over bolts, never really sure when its going to fall on one's head. Arresting recipes, maybe she meant arrest the recipe tester. I hereby convict this book to the "to be recycled pile". I love the title of the book and the pretty blue colors, but I am a bit let down, by the content. Perhaps there will be a revised edition, and Ill punish myself and buy it. :)
16 people found this helpful
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Officially my new favorite of my (many) Mexican cookbooks

I had seen some of the negative Amazon reviews of this cookbook when it was first published and shied away from purchasing it for awhile. But then I took Gabriela Camara's Master Class and became smitten with her recipes and approach to Mexican cooking. I am obsessed with this cookbook! In the week I've owned it I have made several salsas, sopa de hongos (mushroom soup), chilaquiles, puerco al pastor (a well-seasoned minced pork popular in tacos), and the Pescado a la Talla, the signature fish dish of her restaurant Contramar. Every one has yielded spectacular results.

The recipes are easy to follow, and I especially appreciate how Gabriela Camara demystifies certain aspects of Mexican cooking (I heartily disagree with those reviewers who have taken issue with the writing or instructions). Take, for example, her description of cooking moles, explaining that they are not hard to make, but simply require many ingredients and several steps to coax out their maximum flavors. She is loyal to tradition (I especially appreciate her homage to Mexican cooking icon Diana Kennedy) and committed to sustainability. She makes innovative use of flavors and techniques, making dishes accessible to home cooks. The puerco o pollo al pastor recipe is one example, as are the chorizo recipes.

But maybe the reason why I especially love this cookbook is the sense of nostalgia it invokes for me. I have traveled Mexico extensively, and have spent a lot of time in Mexico City. Although I have never been to Contramar, the dishes I have tried thus far have conjured memories of flavors and dishes I've enjoyed in Mexico.

I look forward to cooking my way through the rest of My Mexico City Kitchen while eagerly awaiting Gabriela Camara's next contribution to the culinary world. And I will be first in line to get her next cookbook, assuming she publishes another.
13 people found this helpful
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Good reading and great recipes

I have only tried a couple of recipes, which turned out great. The salsas are specially good, plus quite a few to chose from. I'm looking forward to visiting either restaurant and I like the idea of sharing some wonderful food. I recommend seeing the documentary on Netflix...very interesting.
9 people found this helpful
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So far everything I made is delicious. Try the lime cucumber lime water. A hit!!

Great book. Loved it and bought another one for one of our daughters who loves to cook.
8 people found this helpful
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Inaccurate Recipes

As other readers noticed, recipes seemed poorly tested or not edited well enough. My first go was the flourless cake. I had to use intuition to get through the recipe to fill in the missing ingredients and instruction. Which is disappointing because i get a book like this to follow the instructions to a T, to be able to experience the dish as the author intended. Could have been an exciting book to cook from but with the consistency Rick Bayless and Diana Henry deliver I dont feel like i want to continue testing out this book.
7 people found this helpful