So you know how to roast chilies and have dutifully followed recipes for pozoles and moles. The next step: Getting comfortable enough with the foundations of Mexican cooking to take your cooking to another level. For that, chef Aaron Sanchez has a new, little book, "Simple Food, Big Flavor."

Sanchez, a former contender on "The Next Iron Chef" and now a Food Network regular, has a theory that once you master a few simple base recipes, you can build on them to stretch your creativity. As he explains in the intro, "I decided to take all my incredible flavor memories and distill them into 15 recipes, to cram all that flavor into magical sauces, purées and pastes."

Those flavor memories began when he was born in El Paso into a family with serious foodie credentials (his grandmother and mother, Zarela Martinez, both wrote cookbooks). He had stints in the kitchens of Paul Prudhomme and Douglas Rodriguez.

Though there are only 15 sauce/purée/paste recipes, the ideas for using them and the tips he offers in his witty voice, are what make the book especially valuable. Take garlic-chipotle love, a six-ingredient sauce that will happily sit in the fridge for two weeks and, "A spoonful turns dull soup into eye-rollingly good stuff."

With recipes for duck leg pozole and braised beef short ribs with mole, and tips for adding a Mexican-inspired kick to your burgers, scrambled eggs and fish, you'll be on your way to what Sanchez calls "a 'whoa' moment."

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"Simple Food, Big Flavor: Unforgettable Mexican-Inspired Recipes From My Kitchen to Yours"

By Aaron Sanchez, Atria Books, $30