The Food of Oaxaca

October 1, 2020
Every region of Mexico proudly claims its own unique cooking style, but the southern state of Oaxaca offers some of the nation's best food; UNESCO has even declared Oaxacan food an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Ruiz grew up in a Oaxacan family dogged by tragedy, but he persevered and became a hotel chef before launching his own local restaurant chain. He celebrates the cooking of Oaxaca, relying on the freshest local ingredients as the cuisine's fundamental stars. In that vein, he explains in detail how to make masa at home, nixtamalizing raw corn to produce dough for tortillas, tamales, and more. Beans and chiles also figure prominently in Oaxacan dishes. Ruiz employs all these and other vegetables in both simple and complex creations, and he makes use of the huge variety of herbs and spices abundant in Oaxaca. Where ingredients may be difficult to source in the U.S., he offers substitutions where possible. Color photographs show not only Ruiz' handiworks, but the vibrant cultural milieu that they nourish.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 2, 2020
In this celebratory cookbook, chef Ruiz showcases more than 50 recipes that display the “enormous gastronomic wealth” Oaxaca has to offer. He divides his recipes into three sections: the first part focuses on the food Ruiz’s family made during his childhood, such as corn tortillas and bean tamales; the second features seafood recipes inspired by the Oaxacan coast, like margarita scallop cocktails and pescadillas (fried tortillas stuffed with tuna); and the last consists of dishes from his restaurants, among them ceviche-stuffed chile in passion fruit salsa, and Oaxacan chocolate mousse. Some dishes require ingredients that may prove hard to find, such as the herb chepil, or offputting, as with chapulines (grasshoppers) for grilled steaks with chapulin salsa. Along with the recipes are essays that add vibrant cultural context (on cacao: it was once used as currency in Oaxaca, and today hot chocolate is the traditional drink first served to guests at a wedding), and a list of recommended restaurants. This is perfect for experienced home cooks looking to try their hand at Oaxacan fare.

March 1, 2021

Country music star and lifestyle guru Decker, who opened up her home and her life in the New York Times best-selling Just Jessie, opens up her kitchen in Just Feed Me (150,000-copy first printing). Hesser's James Beard Award-winning The Essential New York Times Cookbook, which has sold more than 100,000 copies since its 2011 publication, gets an update aimed at today's home cooks (four-city author tour). The James Beard Award-winning Kluger offers 190 recipes-plus-techniques in his debut, Chasing Flavor (60,000-copy first printing). Chef/owner of the Casa Oaxaca restaurants, Ruiz is a vocal promoter of Oaxacan gastronomy, as proven by The Food of Oaxaca (Jicama Tacos, anyone?). Once a Morgan Stanley analyst and now owner of Nom Wah Tea Parlor, a purveyor of world-class dim sum in New York's Chinatown, Tang tells the story of the Chinese community there while explaining how to create great dim sum at home in The Nom Wah Cookbook (75,000-copy first printing).

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