Recipe of Memory -Op/116

Classified by the publisher under the headings Cookbooks and Mexican-American Studies, this mix of recipes, photos, anecdotes and history blends its ingredients much as Mole Caragueno combines lamb, chiles, peanuts, clove and cinnamon. Delving into a treasury of 250 recipes collected and recorded by Victor Valle's family from the 1880s into this century, the authors follow the family's history from Guadalajara to Tijuana and then to Los Angeles. Just as early music sounds different when played on early instruments, old recipes taste different when prepared in the old ways; a recipe from the past allows readers ``to sit down with ghosts'' and taste the Chiles Stuffed with Shrimp as they were savored at Sunday lunch in 1888. Recipes such as Conejo en Huerto (Rabbit in the Garden), Sopa de Pichones (Squab on Saffron Rice) and Helado de Tuna (Prickly Pear Sorbet) capture what Mexico's poet laureate, Octavio Paz, calls the ``shock of tastes; cool and piquant, salt and sweet, hot and tart, pungent and delicate.'' Such contrasts in this volume--e.g., quotations from academic historians juxtaposed with methods of roasting, toasting and soaking chiles--similarly startle and often enlighten. (Nov.)