Marcela Valladolid

Traditional fideo seco calls for tomato broth, sometimes seasoned with chipotle, but using mole instead gives this comfort food wonderful added flavor.

The chipotle butter is also great for topping fish fillets or melting over pasta.

this is currently my favorite salsa! The unexpected addition of apples makes for a great texture and adds to the sweetness of roasted tomatillos. I also like to add some diced fresh apple right at the end, for freshness and crunch. Take a flour quesadilla, add some sliced avocados, and top with this salsa. Perfection.

This is a salsa, but whenever I make it I just end up eating it by the spoonful like a salad. The combination of the tart, crisp pomegranate, creamy cheese, and crunchy pine nuts makes a wonderful topping for grilled fish or even a carne asada taco. Pine nuts can be expensive because of the labor-intensive work of extracting them from the pine cones, plus they have a high fat content, which makes them turn rancid quickly. So buy a small quantity and store them in the fridge for no longer than three months.

My aunt Martha swears that this smoky, sweet, tropical salsa takes her back to Yucatán no matter where she is when she makes it. It works especially well with Cilantro Tandoori Chicken, but it will enhance any grilled fish or meat. If the grill's fired up, throw the pineapple right on it; a grill pan will do just fine if you're cooking indoors.

"Drunken" salsas have been around forever. They were originally prepared with pulque, an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of the once-sacred maguey (agave) plant. Pulque, which is not easy to find outside of Mexico, is not distilled and has a much stronger flavor than tequila, which I use in its place in this recipe. The alcohol is mostly burned off in the cooking process, leaving only its musky flavor. The sweetness from the freshly squeezed orange juice gives this salsa a wonderful balance.

Nuts and seeds have been making their way into Mexican sauces and salsas for centuries. The nutty sesame seeds in this salsa, which is served at a very popular small restaurant in Tijuana called Mi Rincón Cenaduria (My Restaurant Nook), give it body and depth. Use this on steak tacos or even with grilled chicken. Peanuts can be substituted for the sesame seeds.

"I used to go to central New Jersey frequently on business and always made time to stop at Eccoqui, an Italian restaurant in Bernardsville," writes Bobbi Reed of Denver, Colorado. "Since I no longer travel to that area, I miss the restaurant — and especially the pappardelle con salsiccia." Try any of your favorite pasta shapes with this sauce. Pappardelle or mafaldine — broad, flat noodles with rippled edges — work particularly well.