The Delicioso Garden

How about switching from zucchini, beets and basil to a garden bursting with Aztec red corn, huautzontli, quelites, Mexican peppers and herbs like papaloquelite and epazote?

You may want to do just this after looking through “The Edible Mexican Garden” (Periplus, $14.95) by Rosalind Creasy. The lush photographs, taken by Creasy, are inspiration enough. And she offers much more.

An expert gardener and landscape designer, she tells how to plan and plant the garden, discusses composting, watering and pest and disease control. Seeds for the more unusual plants can be hard to find, so Creasy lists sources and tells how to harvest seeds for future gardens. She takes care of the results too, providing recipes to use with the garden’s bounty.

Creasy has created a succession of Mexican gardens starting 15 years ago. Some were miniature herb gardens planted in containers, others more elaborate. They included not just vegetables, beans and corn but flowers, and Creasy suggests which to plant for a colorful look.

Although there are many plants that might be unfamiliar, a Mexican garden also involves chard, onions, lettuce, melons and other common plants. Tomatoes too, of course, and Creasy suggests several varieties, ranging from the common beefsteak and Roma to Zapotec pleated tomatoes from Oaxaca.

Recipes cover a wide range, from sopa Azteca (tortilla soup) and pozole to pork stew with purslane, pork shoulder sandwiches, sauces and beverages. She even tells how to render lard, which is essential for traditional Mexican cooking. Home-rendered lard contains less saturated fat than butter, she points out, so an occasional indulgence in authentic flavor is allowable.