Cinco de Mayo, or the fifth of May, is a sort of Mexican St. Patrick's Day -- mostly a reason for many people to party like it's whatever year you want it to be. Most have no idea that the day marks the anniversary of the one in 1862 when the outnumbered army of Mexico -- long independent from Spain -- fended off the invading army from France at Puebla.

Marketing hype aside, it is a good excuse to celebrate things Mexican, including the cuisine, the regional subtleties of which most people are, unfortunately, as ignorant of as they are of Mexican history.

Daniel Hoyer goes regional and historical in his new Mexican cookbook, "Mayan Cuisine" (Gibbs Smith, $34.95). It focuses on the food of the original people of the Yucatan peninsula, the Maya. Like much cuisine from that region of the world, it is based on four indigenous ingredients -- maize, squash, beans and chile peppers -- plus, being on the Caribbean coast, a lot of seafood.

While it evolved over time and absorbed flavors from influences ranging from Spanish and other European, to African and Middle Eastern, settlers, Mayan cuisine is still distinct, writes Mr. Hoyer, a one-time sous chef at Santa Fe's Coyote Cafe who also authored the regional recipe explorations "Culinary Mexico" and "Fiesta on the Grill." He now consults, teaches at the Santa Fe School of Cooking and leads culinary adventure trips to various parts of Mexico and Southeast Asia.

In fact, right now, he's away from his home near Pilar, N.M., leading his inaugural culinary tour to Vietnam organized via his Web site, www.welleatenpath.com. But he chatted by e-mail.

As he noted, while you probably won't find a Mayan restaurant on your block, "many contemporary Mexican and/or Southwestern restaurants in the U.S. have a number of Mayan-influenced dishes on the menu." Kaya in the Strip District is famous for its Yucatan Hot Bean Dip made with black beans.

Digging into a specific cookbook like this one feels like an expedition of discovery as you learn what the author has learned about indigenous ingredients (such as pumpkin seeds and sour orange juice, which is hard to get outside Mexico so he suggests substitutions) and techniques (toasting and roasting onions and garlic before using and cooking with premade spice mixtures called recados).

"The roasting and toasting ... is one of the clever ways that Maya cooks coax a depth and complexity of flavor out of a simple array of ingredients," he noted.

There are many cool surprises. In the introduction, he writes about how the Yucatan peninsula's isolation meant even more outside influence on the cooking. "One of the more notable examples of this is the continuing popularity of Dutch cheeses" there. He includes a Maya-embraced Lebanese immigrant recipe for "Kibes," or kibbeh, the meat and cracked wheat patties.

I loved the chance the book provides to "experience and experiment" with this cuisine. It's not the easiest, but thanks to Mr. Hoyer, it's not as hard as it may look.

Besides, as he put it, "Easy depends on your frame of reference; many of the Mayan families routinely cook these dishes on wood fires in a dirt-floor hut."

He made me want to go to the Yucatan. But in the meantime, he also made me want to try some more Mayan recipes.

There are some in Rick Bayless' "Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico," the 20th anniversary edition of which just came out last year (Morrow, $30). There are also several great-sounding, if more complex, recipes in the just re-released classic, "The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados" by Diana Kennedy (Clarkson Potter, $30). I really want to try her difficult but delicous-sounding Papadzules (Tortillas in Pumpkin Seed Sauce), despite -- or maybe because of -- her note that it's rare to find in restaurants "because none but the most exacting cooks will bother to extract the [pumpkin seed] oil that gives the toque final (special finishing touch), for appearance and contrast of flavor."

Meanwhile, click here to find "cinco de Maya," five Mayan recipes from Mr. Hoyer's book to try next week or whenever you're feeling adventurous.