I will begin this exploration of the Mexican grill with brief descriptions of typical ingredients, techniques, and equipment. If in a specific recipe, you find something unfamiliar, please refer back to this section for a full explanation. 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.