Filet mignon with tomatillo-chipotle sauce: Filete de res al chipotle

The colonial silver mining town of Alamos, Sonora was designed by the king of Spain’s personnal architect and remains every bit as impressive today as it was three hundred years ago. While staying at Alamos’ beautiful Hacienda de los Santos, I taught a cooking course which included this version of filet mignon in chipotle sauce. […]

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Grilled Chihuahua style leg of lamb: Pierna de cordero a la parilla

This northern Mexican recipe, which typifies the outdoor cooking characteristic of the region, is adapted from Larousse de la Cocina Mexicana by Alicia Gironelli. One end of a leg of lamb is thicker than the other, going from about 1 – 2 ½ inches thick, making it easy to satisfy the different tastes for rare, medium and […]

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Paul Carrigan's car

North to Nogales from Puerto Vallarta (and back)

Two years ago, I would’ve been leery about driving out of Mexico alone. Well, “everyone says” that the drive to Nogales (from Puerto Vallarta) is a drag: long, flat, boring, and nothing to see – something like, “straight roads and lots of desert.” As is the usual case with “the CV” (the Conventional Wisdom), it […]

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Mexican three milk cake with rompope: Pastel de tres leches con rompope

Tres leches cake, one of the all-time Mexican favorite desserts, is so named because it is made with three kinds of milk. Sweetened condensed milk has been around since the 1800s, when it was developed as a way of preserving milk, so this is not necessarily a modern recipe. This cake is usually made as a […]

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The Guaymas Chronicles: La Mandadera by David E. Stuart

Cogan’s Reviews Although it’s about Mexico, this one starts off in Ecuador in the 1960s where the author was doing doctoral fieldwork for a dissertation on haciendas in that country. His work took him to a remote research station on the side of a mountain seventy miles from electricity, running water, telephones, etc. One day […]

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cover

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea

Cogan’s Reviews This is the story of a group of men who have become known as the Yuma 14. They are the fourteen illegal immigrants who died attempting to cross the Arizona border in May, 2001. And what a terrible and upsetting story it is. Unknown numbers of these illegal immigrants die every year making […]

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Mesoamerican ballgame (Ulama)

Did You Know? The oldest ballgame in the Americas

Baseball is not the oldest ballgame in the Americas Forget modern “traditions” like the World Series! Forget soccer, tennis and golf! By far the oldest ballgame in the Americas is the little known game of Ulama! Amazingly, this game is still played in some regions of Mexico, where it is believed to have originated more […]

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