There's more to Mexican cuisine than tacos, tortillas and tequila and Lori Horton has just the pedigree to introduce the clean flavours of authentic Mexican cooking to the Australian palette.
Horton is the daughter of Brent Horton who, with his friend Bill Chicolte, opened the first licenced restaurant in St Kilda, Melbourne.
Horton has been helping out with Mexican food since she was a child, working at family restaurants from the age of 10, after her family branched out and started its own string of restaurants in the Melbourne area.
Having travelled the world in search of the perfect Mexican dishes, Horton has presented a selection of quick and easy to prepare recipes in a new book, Mexicali Rose - named for one of the restaurants the family owns.
Far from the cheese and fat laden Tex Mex diners are familiar with, Mexicali Rose features recipes of authentic Mexican cuisine - clean eating foods with a balance of spices designed to complement each other - not to burn your mouth.
Recipes are divided into sections of Dips, Soups, Salads, Starters, Vegetarian, Beef, Chicken, Seafood and Sides, Sauces & Marinades. These include traditional favourites such as Guacamole, Gazpacho, Nachos, Enchiladas, and Burritos as well as dishes such as Mexican Meatballs, Veracruz Style Snapper and Crumbed Cream Cheese and Jalapeno Balls, and Drunken Bananas.
The best thing about the recipes however, are their simplicity.
Too often cookbooks are left on the wayside as the recipes are time consuming or too complex for an amateur chef. In Mexicali Rose, Horton has made Mexican cuisine accessible even to those not caught up in the foodie movement, adding helpful hints and facts about the foods to help the home cook along.
The ingredients are simple to come by, and methods rarely require anyone to go out and buy things they've never heard of or new fandangled contraptions in order to simply stir some ingredients together.
Mexicali Rose, authentic Mexican Cooking by Lori Horton is published by New Holland Publishers and retails for RRP$29.95.