Rick Stein: The Road to Mexico: 120 Vibrant Recipes from California and Mexico

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For Mexicans, their most revered dishes come from the south and their Mecca is undeniably Oaxaca, where locals still dress in traditional costume bringing to life the enduring descriptions of writers like D H Lawrence who fell in love with the area.

Add 1tbsp oil to the pan and soften the onion over a medium/high heat. Add the bay leaves, oregano, cumin and allspice, and cook for another few minutes. Toast the chillies in a frying pan on a high heat for about 20 seconds until fragrant but not burnt. Place them in a bowl and cover with boiling water for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside. Place the soaked chilies and roughly 150ml/5fl oz of their soaking liquid into a food processor. Add the garlic, tomatoes, salt and chipotles en adobo and blend until as smooth as possible. Combine the sugar cumin, smoked paprika and salt and rub all over the pork, working it into the scored skin. Leave at room temperature for half an hour or in the fridge overnight.

From the book: Rick Stein: The Road to Mexico

Place the same pan over a medium heat and toast the bread, 1 teaspoon of the reserved chilli seeds, sesame seeds, almonds, coriander seeds, peppercorns and cinnamon until fragrant but not burnt. Set them aside and blend to a powder when cool. Make the honeycomb first. Grease a baking tray with the butter and set it aside. Put the golden syrup and caster sugar in a large saucepan and let it dissolve over a low heat until you can’t see the sugar crystals. Turn up the heat and cook until the mixture is a deep caramel colour. Turn off the heat and immediately add the bicarbonate of soda. Stir to mix well while it bubbles and foams, then pour the mixture on to the greased baking tray and leave it to cool for 1–1½ hours. Break it into shards and store in an airtight container between sheets of baking parchment for up to a week. We’d even go to the effort of mixing up some chopped tomato into a salsa, mashing up an avocado, sour cream and coriander into guacamole to make it what we thought was more authentic.

For the mole, rinse and clean the chillies. Remove the membranes, stems and seeds, reserving a few teaspoons of the seeds. Toast the chillies in hot dry frying pan for about 20 seconds until fragrant but not burnt, then soak them in a bowl of just-boiled water for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside. To make the pico de gallo, mix all the ingredients together with ½ teaspoon of salt in a bowl and set aside.

Recipes

Tip the remaining 50g/1¾oz flour into a shallow bowl and season generously with salt and pepper. Mix together the breadcrumbs and coconut in a seperate bowl.

The kind of food in The Road to Mexico is so versatile. These quesadillas made an excellent lunch, but I can also imagine serving them as a brunch or part of a colourful Mexican evening feast. A+, I say. Would recommend to a friend. You don’t get the sweetness of the chocolate, or the herbaceous tang of the bitters; just an elevated level of flavour that really enhances the dish. I can see what the excitement over mole sauce is about now. To make the guacamole, pound the chilli in a pestle and mortar with the onion and ¼ teaspoon of salt, into a lumpy paste. Add the avocado and break up the flesh roughly with a fork. The result should be lumpy not smooth. Stir in the lime juice, to taste, and the chopped coriander.Large chunks of slow-cooked beef brisket in a deep dark rich sauce, full of spice and smokiness. Two types of chilli peppers and a special sauce known as adobo, as well as at least two hours stewing, make this an unctuous, hearty dish. In the same pan, roast the tomatoes and garlic until they’re charred. Remove the skin from the garlic and quarter the tomatoes. In part, it was a nod to Mexican mole sauce, but also because I just love using this stuff whenever I can.

Deep-fry the prawns in batches for 1 or 2 minutes until golden-brown and crisp. Drain on kitchen paper.Remove the guajillo chillies from the water, take their stalks off and rinse some of the seeds out if you can. Don’t worry if you can’t get all the seeds out. These chillies are for flavour more than heat. Cut the chillies into smaller pieces. Preheat the oven to l60°C/gas mark 3. Heat the oil in a large lidded casserole pan over a medium-high heat, and brown the pork on all sides. Remove the meat from the pan and add the onions, garlic, chillies and green pepper Sauté until beginning to char then add the vinegar and tomatoes and scrape any bits from the bottom of the pan.