h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Authentic Mexican cooking can be very vegetarian. As I have never seen anything like Mexican food at so called Mexican restaurants outside Mexico - good luck finding it unless you make it yourself.

Some examples:

Stuffed chiles:

The best chile by far to stuff is the Poblano - If you can't find them you can stuff other chiles. However they may taste bland or very hot (stuffing jalapenos for example). The usual process is to burn the chiles ad sweat them to remove the skin. Slit them open, remove veins and seed carefully, and stuff them. Stuffing with cheese, cheese and nuts for example. Then roll in flour, dip in a light egg batter and fry in oil quickly until crispy. Chiles have amongst the highest concentratio of vitamins of all fruits.

Stuffed squash flowers:

Much like the chiles,. Take fresh flowers and stuff them with thin strips of cheese (stuff them into the cavity of the flower. batter and fry them. These are delicious with emental.

Squash flower soup:

Made with squash flower, maize, squash, cream and a few other ingredients - I can post a recipe if anyone wants. It is excellent.

Tamales:

Tamales are corn (maize) cakes made with treated and ground corn (not sweet but white or field corn, or even better blue corn). The corn is made into a sort of cake batter with some oil or fat (vegetarians can use vegetable fat). These are rolled into dried corn husks with a filling of choice. Good fillings can be for example cheese and nuts or green vegetables. The tamales are steamed before eating.
The best tamales are made from corn - I've done it starting from blue corn grain - It is a lot of work, but they taste good.

Quesadillas:

These are simply tacos (a tortilla with something in it) with cheese inside. The flavour of fresh corn tortillas goes well with melted cheese. They are very simple. To prepare a corn tortilla, you need a hot griddle or pan. Put the tortilla on the pan for a few seconds (p to 30secs or so until it is slightly toasty but not browning). Turn it over, place some cheese in the middle. After the other side is toasty, fold the thing in half - This is a quesadilla. You could use flour tortillas and you can always plop in some tomato and chile salsa to spice it up.

Beans:

There are many ways to prepare beans. An excellent dish from Southern Mexico is refried (ie. really fried) black beans with fried plantain. Cook black beans in water until very well done and start to get very soft. Then mash them, and fry in a pan. Serve with a very ripe plantain, cut in half lengthways and fried in a pan until golden. serve them side by side, or like a banana split. crumble chees on the beans and stick in a couple of wedges of fried tortilla wedges.

Nopal Cactus:

This is easy to get in Mexico, very hard otherwise. This is that large flat bunny-ear paddle cactus. You take soem paddles and scrape off the skin and spines. Then slice and chop it into typically bits rather like chopped string beans. They are delicious cooked stirred in with for example tomato and fried onion as a sauce. They taste nice and a little acid, with a slight mucillagenous texture. They are full of vitamins. The fruit of this cactus (tuna) is very nice - has a watermelon texture with many seeds and a scent somewhat like violets.

I can come up with some recipes...

Mexican is definatly my favorite style of cooking.

One of my favorite dishes is 'Huevos rancheros' (sp) Traditionally eaten for breakfast.
My version consists of a portion of black beans in a chilli and tomato sauce (preferably from the night before!) with scrambled egg, cheese and sour cream - wrapped in a warm tortilla.

One of theese and a Bloody Mary is an exellent hangover cure!