I will then turn to cooking with recados, one of four essential building blocks of the Mexican grill. Recados are spice mixtures from the Yucatan peninsula and are little known outside of Mexico. Used for seasoning meats, fish, and poultry for the grill, they can usually be assembled in a few minutes and may be made ahead of time. Salsas are the second crucial building block of the Mexican grill. Colorful, spicy, and always fun, salsas enliven all types of food.
Grilled foods seem to demand the picante, cleansing edge that they give.
Using techniques from pre-conquest Mexico, we will make more than a dozen salsas, each a bundle of unexpected flavor. Fresh, soft tortillas form the third building block, bringing together seasoned meat and salsa. Tortillas are indispensable to the Mexican grill. And corn, not flour, tortillas are the whole-grain foundation of the Mexican grill. Finally, we need a fire to grill over.