Mexico in L.A. : She Cooks So Fine

Pancho Gilardi, a Mexico City advertising executive, was so entranced with the dishes prepared by his household cook that he designed a book to show off her work.

Thus Gloria Gutierrez, a young woman from Toluca, has been pushed into the leagues of Mexico’s cookery superstars. Her name makes possible a play on words in the book’s title, “Las Glorias de Gloria” (The Glories of Gloria).

The recipes--a select group of about 60--are set off by elaborately styled photographs and printed on glossy plasticized pages in startling tones of pink, orange, red, mustard gold and the yellow-green of a Mexican lime. Gilardi was the art director of this graphic tour de force and also one of the photographers.

Published last year in Mexico City, the book is in its second edition in Spanish and has just come out in an English translation. The launching in Southern California was timed to coincide with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit, “Mexico Splendors of Thirty Centuries.”

Gutierrez’s food is exciting and often astonishingly simple. There is a pineapple salad dashed with hot chile and epazote. A bean soup includes nopal cactus. A whole red snapper is buried in cilantro. And flautas are extra crisp because they are made with raspados, the thin layer that puffs up when a tortilla is baked.

Some ingredients may be hard to get, like chivitos, the greens used in a salad; mamey, an orange fleshed fruit; huitlacoche (corn fungus), raspados and black masa. But the resourceful cook can get around such challenges, and most of the recipes are straightforward and practical. There are minor glitches, but these too can be overcome. The quantity of epazote is missing in a recipe for enfrijoladas (enchiladas with bean sauce), for example, and a dish for bread crumb soup with chile piquin actually calls for arbol chiles.

“Las Glorias de Gloria” comes wrapped in orange tissue paper in an orange-lined box. To order either an English- or Spanish-language copy call (213) 274-0640. The price is $39.95 plus $8 for shipping and handling.

The following recipe leans toward contemporary tastes in keeping with the book’s subtitle, “The New Cuisine of Mexico.”

CHICKEN WITH MUSTARD AND CHIPOTLE

12 large chicken legs

2 tablespoons mustard

Juice of 2 limes

1 tablespoon powdered chicken bouillon

Canned chipotle chile

2 tablespoons garlic salt

1 tablespoon black pepper

2 cups oil

Sear chicken legs over flame or in hot heavy pan. Rinse chicken and drain on paper towels. Place in dish and spread with mixture of mustard, lime juice, chicken bouillon, chipotle chile to taste, garlic salt and pepper. Allow to marinate 2 hours or longer. Fry chicken legs in oil over high heat 15 minutes, or until golden. Makes 6 servings.