Review: Pretty Darn Good
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2012
This book has some good information on chiles - varieties, what to look for when buying, and handling information.  It also has some basic information on other main ingredients used in the cookbook - rice, cheese, etc.The recipes seem to be clear and straightforward, and I didn't spot any egregious errors.I can't really address authenticity either way, but I can say that this is the type of recipe I use when I want to cook Mexican food.  Some of the recipes are on the edge of "too simple to be a recipe" (such as the nachos one) but the inclusion is logical.  I really like that the chicken enchilada recipe has instructions for making a sauce rather than using a canned cream soup.I would have liked to have seen a couple of recipes for dried beans and/or refried beans - there are some basic instructions, but there are a lot more possibilities than just cooking beans in water.There are a few typos and grammar errors here and there ("Mesican," "cut in to small pieces,") but not too many and the text is easy to follow.I think the section at the end giving reasons to cook Mexican food at home would be better suited to the description rather than being included as part of the book, or possibly condensed a bit and included in the introduction.  After all, these are selling points, reasons that someone might want to buy the cookbook, rather than text to be read at the end.I picked this up as a free version for the Kindle and will be keeping it because I don't have a Mexican cookbook as of yet and this has some recipes that aren't in my current individual collection.  If you like Mexican food, this probably won't have all the recipes you'll want, but it's a decent ground-level collection and may have some new ideas for someone who's more used to canned red enchilada sauce or fast food tacos.