Rick Bayless

If your only experience with ricotta has been smothered inside lasagna or ravioli, you need to try this simple, herby, green-chile studded ricotta taco.

Ideas for serving: When I've got my grill going, I like to make my almost-Oaxacan tlayudas: I spread out commercially made tortillas (I buy them from a local tortillería and let them cool off completely) into a single layer, brush both sides of each one lightly but thoroughly with oil, then grill them until they're crisp. Once they cool, I break them into big rustic pieces for dipping into this guacamole. Wedges of grilled pita make a delicious and unexpected vehicle for dipping. For a pass-around appetizer, slices of crispy grilled baguette topped with a dollop of bacony guacamole are always a hit.

Bartender's Notes: As you read through this recipe, you'll notice that it mirrors pretty classic margarita proportions … with the addition of orange bitters. Bitters work their magic here, as they do in many drinks, by adding depth, complexity and balance to otherwise pretty simple ingredients. And when you're mixing a drink with mezcal, that depth, complexity and balance are the hardest parts to achieve.

The rooftop of chef Rick Bayless's Chicago restaurant Frontera Grill is dedicated to growing tomatoes, hot peppers and herbs for fresh salsas. Multicolored heirloom tomatoes can be sweeter than other types, Bayless says, and they offer a hefty dose of infection-fighting vitamin C.

Reducing a mixture of coconut liquid, cream, and sugar on the stovetop creates a wonderfully creamy filling, almost like a dulce de leche. Handfuls of fresh shredded coconut give the tarts a tropical flavor, accented beautifully by the fruitiness of prickly pears.

Dried chipotle chiles become smoky-hot packages for a filling made from subtly sweet ripe plantains. Don'erestimate the heat of dried chiles—it's important to wear rubber gloves when working with them, since they can be just as potent as fresh ones.

This savory soup is thickened with masa harina, a flour made from dried corn cured in limewater. Dried ancho chiles give the vegetable broth a stunning brick-red color, and epazote (a pungent wild herb native to Mexico) contributes authentic flavor.

Cubed potatoes and hefty chunks of fresh corn on the cob make the soup hearty enough to serve as a main course.

Pickled red onions — a staple at meals throughoutu the Yucatÿn peninsula — are one of our all-time favorite condiiments. They are wonderful piled on a burger, roll-up, or sandwich; tossed in a salad; or festooned over a plate of sliced tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil, and then finished off with a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper. They also make a colorful topping for just about any hors d'oeuvre.

I think you'll understand why I love rice dishes so much when you taste this one—the robust, complex red-chile flavor is infused into plump rice grains (you definitely get the best texture from medium-grain rice), which are nestled around perfectly cooked shrimp. Not only could I eat this dish day after day, but it's one that always comes to mind as an easily likable one-pot main dish for casual entertaining. Add a salad and you've got all you need.

To serve Red Chile Rice on a buffet, you may want to choose small shrimp and peel them completely (taking off the final joint and tail) for the convenience of your guests. Don't forget to mix everything well before serving, since bits of salsa and green onions rise to the top during baking.

[This salsa is a primary ingredient in the recipe for Red Chile Rice with Shrimp and Bacon.]

Today, Mexico's best coffee is ripened and dried along the roadways in the cloud-blanketed highlands of Chiapas and over through Veracruz and Oaxaca. The prime beans are usually roasted a little darker than ours — almost a Viennese roast — and they brew a nice, medium-bodied liquid with some spunk. They tell me it's the second-class beans that get roasted darker, to a mahogany black with a shining sugar coat.

The steam-powered espresso machines in the city cafeterías extract a trio of ethnic brews: espresso, straight, foamy and Italian; café con leche, mixed with hot milk, French-style (but so common one would mistake it for purely Mexican); or americano, simply diluted with water. The more rural brew leans toward the Spanish, the history books say, but it seems like a Mexican-flavored campfire version to me. Café de olla at its best is pot-boiled in earthenware with molassesy piloncillo sugar and spices like cinnamon, anise or cloves. These days, many traditional city restaurants offer the dark, delicious drink more regularly, served in old-fashioned earthenware mugs at the end of the meal.

Elote Asado

Out on a walk in practically any Mexican town, who can pass up the always-present fresh ears of chewy field corn, turning and crisping over the coals? Who isn't attracted to the smoky-smelling, pit-roasted ears (pibinales) when they're poured from gunnysacks in Yucatan? And who doesn't like the fried corn kernels with epazote and chiles in Toluca (esquites), or the ones served from big boiling cazuelas in the capital's Alameda Park, or the ones topped with cream, powdered chile and cheese in the northeastern states?

Our sweet corn isn't the same to me, boiled and buttered and served as a summertime vegetable. It lacks a little backbone. So when I'm having it, I usually give it a taste of an open fire, a squeeze of lime and a sprinkling of hot powdered chile…or the lavish spread of butter, cream and cheese of this recipe. Serve it anytime you're grilling, and you'll please practically everyone.

Crema Espesa

It isn't uncommon to see three of four buckets of cream in Central, West-Central and Tabascan markets: from thin, sweet and fresh to well ripened, thick and tangy. It's all heavy cream — not the light, low-butterfat "cream" that is cultured for sour cream here — so it has a richer, glossier texture. And you can bet it's not pasteurized, because the process would have killed the natural bacteria that perserves and thickens the riper cream.

To me, this thick, ripe cream (similar to French crème fraîche) is one of the great pleasures of Mexican cooking. Mixing a little milk or cream into our commercial sour cream is a passable substitute here, but nothing like the smoother, less acidic taste of this recipe

Pay de Limón

At our cooking classes in Oaxaca, I guide our students through the markets, buying tastes of the thick cream (it's like milky butter with a cheesey flavor and unctuous texture), the perfumey, greenish-yellow key limes and exotic tropical fruit like guanabana, chirimoya, guava, black zapote and papaya. In order to offer more than a simple taste of these traditional foods after one trip to the market, I combined that incredible cream and lime into a simple pie for our class meal, serving it with an assortment of pureed fruits. Even with our American homemade cream (or crème fraîche) and less-tart hybrid Persian limes, the pie makes a lovely special-dinner finale.

There are many versions of special-occasion green rice in Mexico. My current favorite is this one, green with the richness and welcoming spiciness of poblano chiles, backed up by herbal cilantro and sweet onion and garlic. This full-flavored rice can accompany a simple grilled fish or chicken or any dish that weaves a little green chile into its sauce.

The rice is made pilaf style, like most Mexican rices, meaning that the raw rice is fried first so that the grains will be separate when cooked. Dependable as that method is, this rice comes out a touch sticky because of all the poblano pureed into the broth. I make it ahead, spread it onto a baking sheet to cool and allow excess moisture to evaporate, so the rice will fluff up into separate grains. Then I reheat it in a steamer.