The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Cookbook

A Taco Crawl of Sunset Park, Brooklyn

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Tacos in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Photo by Mira Evnine.

Tacos in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Photo by Mira Evnine.

When I began testing recipes for my cookbook, lots of people asked whether I could find the right Mexican ingredients in New York. When I said yes, they said, “Are you buying them in Sunset Park?” I didn’t know Sunset Park, a neighborhood in southwest Brooklyn, south of Red Hook. I had been buying my ingredients in the small Mexican bodegas near my house in Queens. Since Sunset Park was about 90 minutes away from me by train, I made a mental note to visit at some point….

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Eat Mexico the cookbook, now available for pre-order

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Eat Mexico cover

My Mexico City cookbook — the project that sprung partially from this blog, and my food adventures and tours in the city — is now available for pre-order! You can find Eat Mexico: Recipes from Mexico City’s Streets, Markets and Fondas on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powell’s. It’ll be released officially at the end of May/early June.

I’m really proud of how it turned out. Mexico City’s food and culture and vistas jump off the page, due to Penny de los Santos’ excellent photography, the vision of the team at Kyle Books, and the super cool design from DF-based Little Mule Studio. On my end it felt like a privilege to write about wandering through the streets and markets, and the dishes and ingredients that have made such a big impact on me: masa, tortillas, chiles, beans, tamales, moles and salsas.

I’ve written a series on Serious Eats about what it’s been like to write a cookbook, and I’ll be writing one more installment that describes what happens after you turn in the manuscript. In the meantime, if you want me to do an event in your city, let me know! I’ll be sharing some tour dates with you as it gets closer, plus hopefully some recipes that didn’t make it into the book. I’ve also got some fun ideas for giveaways on the blog once the book officially hits the shelves, so please stay tuned.

As always, thank you for reading and sharing this experience with me over the past few years. It’s been completely wild to think that I arrived in Mexico in 2009 without an idea of what I’d do with my time, while mulling in my heart of hearts that I’d like to write a book. Looking at my early advance author copy today, I almost can’t believe that I did it.