Mole con Pollo: Chicken cooked in a smoky chocolate- and cinnamon-based mole sauce with chipotle chillies, served with Mexican rice with kidney beans, garlic, coriander and tomatoes

“I love rabri. And gulab jamun. And jalebi.” Coming from a 34-year-old in Calcutta, not much surprising these words. Except this is not a true blue Bengali taking stock of the parar mishtir dokan. Meet Eduardo Perez (inset), a Yucatan-born Mexican chef who’s come to Taj Bengal with a Mexican food festival, searching the connections between Indian and Mexican palates and in love with all things sweet. His only complaint so far? “I wonder how people stay so skinny even after all these lovely sweets here!”

On his first visit to India, Perez, who has been taking the festival across most Taj properties in India, talks of the enthusiastic response that India has to Mexican fare. “It is the taste,” he says. “Though when we say spicy, we mean hot with chillies and not the spices that Indians typically use. On the other hand, look at some of the ingredients — tomato, garlic, coriander, our version of cottage cheese or panela, cumin and jaggery. Even molcajete or the mortar and pestle we use is the same I’ve seen here (shil-nora), only we make ours with volcanic rocks. There’s a lot of similarity.”

Sopa Azteca: Chicken, tomato and chipotle chilli soup served with strips of fried tortilla and a generous dash of sour cream

Though his festival menu throws up Tex-Mex regulars like chimichangas and fajitas, Perez makes a careful distinction between Tex-Mex and authentic Mexican fare.

“Tex-Mex is the food that became popular in the US via Texas, which shares a border with Mexico. The dishes may be the same, but ingredients are replaced with whatever is available and is more palatable to the Americans. So you’d find a lot of peppers instead of chillies, you’d find more sour cream rather than cottage cheese and a lot of ketchup which I hate with all my heart.”

“Traditional Mexican food, like Indian cuisine, doesn’t have the concept of fine dining. Our traditional fare is simple, spicy and healthy. Our traditional ingredients like edible cactus, chillies like chipotle and habanero, mole or the sauce we use for a lot of dishes are used fresh. Our idea is health first and taste second, instead of the other way round,” he explains.

Well the proof of the pudding is in eating, and from the fare served at Taj Bengal, one can safely conclude that Perez’s fest scores high on both taste and health.

For those who’ve taken to corn tortillas (most of which, even the ones used in Mexico, are now mass-produced in China!), nachos, tacos and fajitas, and are looking to expand their repertoire, Perez suggests five recipes to look up:

Salsa: We have many different kinds. Take green tomatoes, onion, garlic, coriander and chilli, roughly chop and mash in a mortar.

Ceviche: Take tomatoes, onion, coriander, lemon juice, salt, pepper, finely sliced pieces of basa fish fillet and mix up. Though it is originally a Peruvian recipe, we make it better. They put pieces of mangoes in it!

Mole: A sweet, smoky sauce with more than 15 ingredients — including chocolate, chilli, tomato, garlic, onion and cinnamon. We simmer meats in this sauce. Use a mortar to grind spices and for that smoky flavour, dry-roast a tomato in its skin and then grind it.

Chiles en nogada: We take large Poblano chillies (roasted and de-seeded) and stuff them with browned mince and dry fruits. We coat them in egg and fry them. We serve it with a sauce of walnuts ground with cream and sprinkle pomegranate seeds on top. It is the colour of the Mexican flag — green, white and red.

Cochinita Pibil: We marinate pork with achiote paste and bitter orange juice and cook it wrapped in banana leaf. We bury the leaf-wrapped meat underground and light a fire on top to slow-roast.