Chevys & Rio Bravo Fresh Mex Cookbook

(Ten Speed Press)

When Peter Serantoni, an Italian raised in Sweden, graduated from the prestigious Stockholm Hotel and Restaurant Academy, he didn't know much about Mexican cooking. He's since become one of the biggest pros on the planet—and would like to translate some of that considerable knowledge to you.

As executive chef and vice president of food and beverage for Chevys and Rio Bravo restaurants (one of the nation's leading Mexican restaurant groups), Serantoni is the head of the team that put together the new Chevys & Rio Bravo Fresh Mex Cookbook. Even if you've never done more than pop a frozen Mexican meal into your microwave or gotten takeout from your favorite Mexican restaurant, Serantoni contends that you—like him—will be able to quickly and easily pick up the basics.

First and foremost, begin chanting "fresh" like the Chevys/Rio Bravo contingent. Their "Fresh Mex" concept is the backbone of their cooking. In their restaurants, that means salsa blended every hour, avocados smashed daily for guacamole, tortillas and chips made constantly all day, never using canned goods and buying the absolute freshest ingredients available when it comes to everything like fish, fruits and vegetables.

What that concept might translate to in your kitchen are margarita scallops, made with the freshest scallops you can find, fresh lemon and lime juices, chopped onion and cilantro leaves; red chile chicken taquitos with homemade sweet-hot jalapeno jelly, grilled pineapple salsa and chipotle sour cream; and shrimp and potato enchiladas verdes with diced green bell pepper, onion, cilantro, homemade salsa and chipotle purée and fresh corn tortillas.

What's particularly exciting—fresh, if you will—about this book is that you're not simply getting "here are the tried-and-true basics of Mexican cooking...blah, blah, blah" (there are certainly scores of other books where you can learn that), but, instead, you get the Chevys/Rio Bravo unique spin on things. That means, in addition to the aforementioned recipes, taste sensations like green apple salsa fresca. Green chiles and green apples are a wonderful pair and the salsa dynamically complements salmon, pork and lamb. Parmesan-crusted dungeness crab quesadillas made with an addictive chipotle-cream cheese sauce will make you wonder how you could have only munched on plain cheese ones before, if that's been the case.

Is all this really doable for someone who has never before played host to a jalapeno pepper, let alone a tortilla? The Chevys team certainly tries to make it so. After a helpful introduction to the cuisine, all recipes are concisely written and easy to follow. These pros are responsible for figuring out how to quickly and effectively communicate recipes and techniques to chefs at more than 150 restaurants regularly—and that same talent makes things much easier for the home chef than in many more complex cookbooks written by those not in the restaurant industry. Excellent color photographs serve as a side dish to the recipes.

There is, however, a lot of page flipping to get all this homemade goodness. After all, if this were all run-of-the-mill, a recipe ingredient list would just call for 1 can enchilada sauce (as some books do). Instead, in the Parmesan crab quesadillas, for instance, you'll flip to one page to make the chipotle-cream cheese, another for the roasted red pepper and chipotle chile aioli and another for the mango salsa. In the red chile chicken taquitos, you'll turn to one page for instructions on making "salsa" chicken, another for the sweet-hot jalapeno jelly, another for the grilled jalapeno salsa and another for the chipotle sour cream.

The delicious thing, of course, is that such condiments as sour creams, jellies and salsas can be used after the initial dish is done as accompaniments to other recipes in the book or simply spooned over your own meat and vegetable dishes. And, after all, there is a price to pay when it comes to demanding completely fresh ingredients in everything you make. Fortunately, in this case, it's one tasty invoice.

RECIPES
—Margarita Scallops
—Green Apple Salsa Fresca

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