Ah, Mexico.  I am still reveling in the zippy, healthy salsas, soups, and stews that I learned to make in San Miguel de Allende.  

The true cuisine of Mexico differs from region to region, with a dizzying variety of dishes that barely resemble our American-Mexican food.  In the mountains of central Mexico, where I attended cooking school, I learned that most dishes begin with dried chiles, whereas fresh chiles are more typical of the coastal foods. 

Cooking with dried chiles can be a tad intimidating.  They are often toasted briefly before soaking, but are so easy to burn.  Marilau, my Mexican cooking mentor, taught me how to coax the subtle and not-so-subtle flavors out of the dried chiles.  "You must always be in control of the spicihood", says Marilau.  Spicihood may just be my new favorite Spanglish word. 

Marilau also taught me that the tomatillo is a beautiful, versatile vegetable.  I am embarrassed to admit that I had never cooked with tomatillos before.  I wasn't sure what the heck to do with these firm, green, husky tomato-ish vegetables.  Now I know:  make Salsa Verde and make it often.  

As Marilau loves to remind us gringos, real salsa is not for dipping.  Mexicans do not eat chips and salsa before the meal.  Salsa, in the true regional Mexican sense, is a sauce which appears as part of the main dish, on the side of simple grilled pork roast, in the broth of tortilla soup, or as the backbone of a creamy pumpkin seed sauce. 

Like most Americans, it would be impossible not to want to dip a chip into these salsas. But I'll show you how to cook with them too.

I have three salsas for you to try.  First the Salsa Verde, which is as easy as throwing tomatillos, onion, chiles and cilantro in a blender, then gently warming over the stove for 15 minutes.  

Next, there is Salsa de Chile Guajillo, that bright red sauce made of dried guajillo chiles and tomatoes, and a few secret ingredients.  Blended and strained, a smooth perfectly balanced guajillo salsa is the benchmark of excellence for Mexican home cooks.  

Lastly, but not least because this is actually my favorite of the three, a Salsa Morena, or brown sauce. This sauce is also a breeze to make, just sauté ingredients, blend and strain.  It tastes earthy from two types of dried chiles, pasillas and anchos, and slightly sweet from adding raisins (or apples or dates).  It is just the sauce to dress up wild game, duck, pork tenderloins, beef brisket, chicken or turkey.  

Once you get a feel for how spicy you want your salsas, you can vary the "spicihood" by adding more of the chile's seeds and veins.

Marilau"s 5 Rules of Cooking with Chiles: 

1. Never wash a dried chile.  Just gently clean it with a cloth.
2. When toasting dried chiles, be gentle and brief.  Flip every few seconds, and remove from the heat as soon as the aroma reaches your nose.
3. A smooth sauce is the hallmark of a great Mexican cook. You must have a blender and a sieve to make these salsas. 
4. Always control the "Spicihood" by removing the appropriate amount of chile's veins and seeds for your dish. 
5. Chiles are like music; you need to let each one sing. Don't mix dried and fresh chilies in the same sauce. Don't mix red and green salsas on the same plate. And never make a sauce with more than one type of fresh chile.

This salsa will stay fresh in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or freeze for up to 3 months. 

To prepare the chiles, use scissors to snip off the stem, then cut them lengthwise and open like a book.  Carefully remove veins and seeds.  

To prepare the dried chiles, uses scissor to snip off the stem.  Then cut them lengthwise and open like a book.  Carefully remove veins and seeds.

By the time March rolls around, we are all ready for a change of scenery.

And for a place in which you can leave the house without your Uggs, down puffy and fleece jacket. 

The mass exodus from Jackson Hole is about to begin.  If your Spring Break is taking you South, here is a recipe to get you in the groove.  And if you are staying in Jackson Hole, then you will likely have some fabulous powder skiing and this hearty soup from central Mexico to keep you warm.

 I have fallen in love with the food of central Mexico, with the dried guajillo and pasilla peppers, and the creamy pumpkin seed sauces.  With the chochoyotes (little dumplings made of masa dough) floating in the tomatillo soup, and the cinnamon-laced flan.  

The city of San Miguel de Allende lies 90 miles north of Mexico City, in the mountains at 6000 feet.  This is the land of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a mecca for artists and students.  It is the land of salsas made from guajillo, pasilla, chipotle and ancho chilis, which are the basis of central Mexican cuisine. 

Here is your first "change of scenery" spring break recipe:  Caldo Tlalpeño, a hearty and healthy tomatillo-based soup, with potato, zucchini, and chochoyotes. And it couldn't be simpler.

First tomatillos are husked, cleaned and quartered, and placed in a blender with white onion, garlic and cilantro.  The vegetables are pureed, and then brought to a boil with chicken broth and a whole chipotle chili.  After a brief simmer, diced potatoes and zucchini are added. Then the chochoyotes:  little dumplings made of masa dough (the same dough used to make corn tortillas), which are rolled into marble-sized balls, with a thumbprint in the middle, like Mexican gnocchi.  When the chochoyotes rise to the surface of the broth, they are done.  Just like gnocchi! 

Before serving, the whole chipotle is fished out of the soup, and chopped up to be served alongside as a condiment.  Chipotles measure 15,000 on the Scoville scale (a measure of a chili pepper's heat level), but when cooked whole without exposing seeds and veins, just a subtle undertone of heat and a lot of flavor is added. 

These recipes are from Marilau, my Mexican cooking instructor.  Her school specializes in the regional recipes taught to her by her ancestors. These recipes are centuries-old, and Marilau is just now writing them down. 

Next on our tour of central Mexican food:  Salsa 101.  The red and green (and brown) salsas of your dreams. 

Tortilla dough is easy to make, or you can purchase it fresh from the local tortilleria, Tortilleria mi Pueblo.  You'll find them on Broadway in Jackson Hole, tucked behind the Gun Barrel Steak House. 

Sunday was such a perfect day for multisporting.  Around here, multisporting means three or more sports are pursued in one day.  This takes organization, a bag full of clothes and gear, and the right food.  It was fortuitous that I had made a big batch of Bacon Sushi Rice Bars and Balls first thing Saturday morning.

The debut of the warm March sun seduces everyone to drop everything and head outdoors for a full day of activities. Everywhere everyone is frantically skinning uphill, skiing downhill, skate-skiing across sun-crusted meadows, biking slushy roads, and taking those white legs out for the first spring run. From sunup to sundown, no one is willing to squander one precious hour of sunlight, or one balmy breeze.

A successful multisport day starts with a good breakfast. Since I was already making Bacon and Egg Sushi RIce Bars (and Balls), breakfast was a deconstructed version of the same ingredients:  steaming rice, crispy bacon bits, scrambled eggs, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a dappling of black sesame seeds, for a bit of crunch.  Rice for breakfast?  Oh yeah. 

Rice is also the ideal ingredient for a high energy power bar to keep you going all day long.  Why rice? Because it's easy to digest while working out, and its high glycemic index makes it the perfect post-workout food as well.  And a savory, rice-based power bar is a nice change of pace after a long winter of prepackaged, nut-oat-chocolate bars.  

My multisport day started with an early morning cruise with Nick on the sun-crusted meadows in Grand Teton National Park.  In the spring, the combination of warm sunny days and single digit nights creates a crust on snowy meadows that is perfect for skate skiing. 

There is a certain freedom that comes with crust cruising...you can ski over fences, you can ski in the bed of a creek, and you can ski fast and far.  But you can't ski all day; the spell is broken mid-morning as the sun beats down on the crust and it cracks, causing you to break through.  

As the sun warmed up on Sunday, it occurred to me that I should haul out my bike.  Early spring bike rides are normally windy, mud-splattered endeavors, and not all that enjoyable.  But last Sunday there was barely a breeze, and as the temperatures topped out at 47ºF, a bike ride down Fall Creek Road was not painful at all.  

How do you top off a day of skate skiing and the first big spring bike ride?  You go alpine skiing, of course.  The warm sunny days have transformed our snowpack into a wide spectrum of ski conditions... powder, corn, slush, ice...all in the same day.  If you hit it right, usually in the early afternoon, you'll be skiing on corn:  soft, easy snow that is fast and forgiving. 

The perfect day of multisporting preferably ends with aprés ski, and a chance to swap tales of the day with friends.  Someone else's multisport day is always going to be more outrageous than yours around here.  Guaranteed. 

These rice bars are the invention of Allen Lim, an exercise physiologist, and Biju Thomas, a chef, who teamed up to create real food for the professional cyclists they train. They found that their athletes were bored with their usual prepackaged power bars, and as a result, they weren't getting enough calories.  More importantly, they were developing "gut rot" from eating too many dense, sweet bars.  

Based on the Chinese rice cake Zong Zi, which are wrapped in bamboo leaves, these savory bars are wrapped in paper foil, and shaped to fit into the athlete's back jersey pocket.  

The bars can be easily varied by swapping chicken sausage for the bacon, and adding nut butters, roasted cashews, or raisins.  Although designed for elite cyclists, they work equally well for an aging athlete like myself, mountain biking on slushy roads on a gorgeous spring day. 

This recipe is adapted from The Feed Zone Cookbook, by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim, a must-have whole-foods cookbook for athletes.  

Some tips for success:

Do not rinse the rice before cooking; if you do, it won't stick together to form a bar or a ball.  Believe me, I've made that mistake (but if you forget, you'll have a nice rice bowl).

The easiest way to prepare the bacon is to take the whole package and chop it without separating the slices first.  They will separate in the frying pan.  Also, be sure to really blot out all of the grease.  You don't want your rice bars to be greasy.

Form the bars or balls while the rice is still warm; it will stick together better.

Make your bars gluten-free by using tamari instead of soy sauce.  

One more thing:  it is important to choose the right type of rice, as this recipe won't work with many varieties. Calrose is a medium grain rice that is available locally.  It is inexpensive, cooks in 20 minutes, and has the sticky quality you'll need. You could use any rice marked "sushi" (which I buy in bulk at Jackson Whole Grocer in Jackson), or the "sweet rice" you'll find in Asian markets. 

Yield:  about 10 bars, or 2 dozen balls