Eat Your Way to Health with Healthy Mexican Recipes – 1765th Edition
The Northern Mexican diet is considered by many to be one of the three healthiest diets in the world. Beans, generally pintos, which by the way are the healthiest of all beans, are paired in many dishes with corn, especially corn tortillas. This amazingly simple diet is quite sustainable and with the addition of chiles in salsa or fresh or pickled chiles such as jalapenos—the diet is quite tasty.
The benefit you receive from eating chiles in healthy Mexican recipes coupled with a balanced diet and a moderate amount of exercise is that weight loss or at the least maintenance is assured. You will not be as hungry when you eat spicy and will also eat less.
Chiles also act to reduce stress, reduce facial wrinkles, increase heart health, assist with digestion and circulation and have been known to cure endless amounts of physical ailments. Cooking healthy Mexican recipes makes it easy to begin the chile-a-day habit. You can learn lots of healthy Mexican recipes during Jane Butel’s weekend or weeklong cooking schools or join “Cooking with Jane”, Jane Butel’s cooking club. For additional information, join the enewsletter mailing list for Butel’s Bytes.
To select chiles for cooking, if you are searching for milder chiles, always select ones that have broad shoulders and blunt tips—conversely, select chiles with pointed tips and narrow shoulders for hotter dishes. This is important because you can have up to 35 different piquancies on one plant at a time.
Mexican foods frequently contain chiles, though not as spicy as north of the border New Mexican or even Tex-Mex cooking. In Mexican cooking they use less chiles or marinate them in lime juice if there is a concern they will be too hot. The exception is in the Yucatan where the Mayans have long used the really hot habenero chiles.
In Mexico, the ubiquitous sour cream and lots of cheese are not found—those are basically commercialized preparations of fast food American Mexican restaurants.
An example of a healthy Mexican recipe for sauce that is used from morning to night, is the Pipian sauce, a delightful, nut like tasting sauce that is really yummy on eggs, tacos, as a dipping sauce, over vegetables and meats. It is from Oaxaca and once made keeps well in the refrigerator and can be frozen if desired.
Here’s the recipe—
Pipian Sauce
Yield: 4 1/2 cups (approximately)
1 teaspoon ground chipotles 1 cup green pumpkin seeds or pipian 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro 1 cup sliced scallions, including the greens 1/2 cup cooked or canned tomatillos, drained and chopped 2 cups chicken broth
1. Toast the pumpkin seeds in a hot skillet until they start to brown, taking care not to let them burn.
2. Combine the chile, toasted seeds, cilantro, scallions, and tomatillos in a blender along with 2 cups of chicken broth and puree until smooth. Keeps well in the refrigerator for two weeks or frozen in a sealed container.
Jane Butel, the first to write about Southwestern cooking, has published 19 cookbooks, several being best sellers. She operates a full-participation weekend and week-long vacation cooking school, an on-line school, a cooking club, a monthly ezine, a mail-order spice, cookbook, Southwestern product business and conducts culinary tours and team-building classes. For more information on this article go to http://www.janebutelcooking.com/Public/Articles/index.cfm? , 1-800-473-8226.
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