Cooking the Mexican Way: Revised and Expanded to Include New Low-Fat and Vegetarian Recipes (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks)

Introduces the fundamentals of Mexican cooking, including special ingredients for such dishes as enchiladas, nachos, tacos, and guacamole.

Grade 5-8-These three titles are, for the most part, worthy successors to the originals. (Cooking the East African Way was originally called Cooking the African Way [Lerner, 1988].) Each well-organized and well-written book now has a greater emphasis on low-fat and vegetarian recipes. An introductory section contains information on the culture, geography, food, holidays, and festivals of the country or region. This is followed by safety tips; glossaries of cooking utensils, terms, and special ingredients; healthy and low-fat cooking tips; and a metric conversion chart. A short discussion on eating customs is followed by sample menus complete with shopping lists. The clearly written recipes that follow are organized by type of meal. Brief introductory notes, suggestions for substitute ingredients, and cooking tips are included in many of the recipes. Preparation time and serving size are indicated. The books are visually appealing with many full-page, full-color photographs (frequently adjacent to the recipes they refer to). A couple of minor quibbles are the lack of pronunciation guides (present in the previous editions) and the lack of a nutritional breakdown for each recipe. Carole L. Albyn and Lois S. Webb's The Multicultural Cookbook for Students (Oryx, 1993) would be a good companion to any of these volumes. Fran Osseo-Asare's A Good Soup Attracts Chairs (Pelican, 1993; o.p.) introduces West African cuisine. These new titles will be useful for cultural and heritage school projects as well as fun reads for intermediate cooks.
Janice Greenberg, formerly at Brooklyn Public Library, NY
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