New cookbook offers recipes fresh from Mexico

Gabriela Camara loved exploring the sophisticated melting-pot food scene of Mexico City in the 1990s. But as a student of art history, she never considered entering the restaurant business until she and some friends took a trip to the Pacific coast town of Zihuatanejo, where she’d spent many family vacations.

Over ceviche and fish tacos in open-air restaurants called palapas, they basked in the relaxing vibe and talked about how they wished they could find a similar escape from the urban grind back in Mexico City. They sketched out the restaurant of their dreams — cool and bistro-like, with a focus on sustainable seafood, organic produce and freshly made tortillas served hot off the comal. Despite their lack of formal culinary training, they brought their vision to life. More than 20 years later, her restaurant, Contramar, continues to win accolades as one of Mexico City’s hottest dining destinations. Camara has since opened 10 more restaurants, including Cala in San Francisco, and she’s earned a James Beard Foundation Outstanding Restaurateur nomination.

In “My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions,” Camara shares the recipes and values that grew from an unconventional upbringing in the small town of Tepoztlan outside of Mexico City with an Italian-born mom and Mexican dad, both progressive-minded academics who grew their own food, collected rain water in cisterns and allowed their young daughter to help cook fresh tortillas. Those early lessons, along with bountiful family feasts, shape the way she cooks today, “combining a fanaticism for freshness that I got from my Italian side with the love of flavor that’s my Mexican birthright,” she writes.