Diana Kennedy Cookbooks

[Richard Kilgore]

Sandra - Can you make some specific recommendations for books by Mexican authors...ones that have been translated into English and are available in the U.S.? I would not buy just any cookbook on, say, Southern U.S. cooking by a U.S. author because they were from Georgia, without an idea of the quality and preferably a recommendation.

[sandra]

Richard, I'm going to the US next week and I'll have a look around the bookshops to see what's available -

I have 2 that are in both languages, one is by Josefina Velazquez de Leon, it's from 1979 and it's called Libro de Cocina Mexicana Para El Hogar Americano (Mexican Cookbook For American Homes) I can't rememebr if I got it in USA or Mexico...

The other one is by Adela Fernandez from 1989 it's called La Tradicional Cocina Mexicana y Sus Mejores recetas (Traditional Mexican Cooking and It's Best Recipes) I think this one was purchased in USA, but not sure...

I have also just received as a gift "Frida's Fiestas" by Guadalupe Rivera and Marie-Pierre Colle, I haven't tried any of the recs yet, but they look great and the photos are also very nice... It's all in English.

I'll get back to you after I snoop around a bit...

Edited April 21, 2003 by sandra (log)

[stellabella]

when i'm in Latin American Country X i always look for cookbooks--in gift shops, book stores, wherever books are sold. and it's hard to find cookbooks translated into english.

[Richard Kilgore]

Thanks Sandra. I will look forward to your recommendations. I have seen the Frida book and planned on picking it up just because it is related to Frida.

[stellabella]

Frida's fiestas is a good one--Lupe Rivera is Diego's daughter.

I have cooked several recipes from it and they were all good.

The biographical bits about Frida are interesting, too, but very sanitized.

[sandra]

I just posted this bit regarding Mexican cookbooks available in English as part of an answer on another thread...

Here are some books I find are very good at representing Mexican food:

Mexico The Beautiful - Susanna Palazuelos - apart from good recs it also has some pretty photos

Rosa Mexicano - Josefina Howard, Lila Lomeli - from the owner of the NY restaurant, which, if you have not been to, you MUST go.... Although I do like Zarela's recipes, I think her NY restuarant is not too hot...

Seasons of my Heart - Susanna Trilling, from the cooking school in Oaxaca

A Cook's Tour of Mexico, Authentic Recipes from the Country's Best Open-Air Markets, City Fondas, and Home Kitchens - Nancy Zaslavsky, I haven't seen this, but my uncle recommends it. It is always good if the author is presenting existing recipes rather than researched and reworked recipes.

Any book by Zarela Martinez

Some of them have already been mentioned, but bear repeating -

Buen Provecho!

[mcdowell]

The Essential Cuisines of Mexico -and- My Mexico are both excellent choices for Kennedy books.

I also have The Art of Mexican Cooking, but if you're limiting yourself to just two, you could leave that one out.

[caroline]

Diana Kennedy's cookbooks are a treasure trove of recipes. But they are hard for the beginner. Sure, she lists the sources but she doesn't give someone who lives outside the country much clue about whether these are the recipes of the rich or the poor (very important in Mexico), festive or everyday and so on. Many of them come from families with servants and are very labor intensive.

If you want to start cooking Mexican food I have two recommendations:

(1) Start boiling. We don't do this much. But Mexicans demand a caldo at the beginning of the midday meal, a broth, and the meat is used in other dishes--mainly beef or chicken.

(2) Master two basic salsas. Rojo y verde. They vary widely but at least in Central Mexico feature in endless recipes. They keep at least two weeks in the fridge. Red sauce. A core recipe might be guajillo chiles toasted, deveined and deseeded blended with tomates verdes (tomatillos) boiled until soft. Green sauce. A core recipe might be tomates verdes, chiles serranos boiled together and blended (in that indispensable blender) with some cilantro. Hundreds of variants of both.

Now, dinner. first course, broth. Second course rice or noodles. Third course, pork simmered in salsa verde, bits of tender beef with salsa roja, chicken cooked in salsa roja, steak with a salsa on the side, etc etc. Then dessert.

With these salsas, guacamole, chilaquiles are a snap, ditto enchiladas, ditto breakfast dishes of eggs and salsa in various forms, ditto chicarron in one of the salsas (food of the gods). You could go weeks with just these two recipes. (And of course they'd help your chile con carne, goulash, rogan josh, beef vegetable soup and tons of other non-Mexican dishes.

[Jaymes]

Caroline - thank you for your excellent post! Most informative.

[skchai]

If you want to start cooking Mexican food I have two recommendations . . .

Rachel aka Caroline, I just had to ask: are you now working on a book on Mexican Cookery? How long have you been in Mexico?

I loved Food of Paradise, and in your absence it has become the definitive work on Hawai`i local cuisine, besides winning the IACP award. I've been waiting with bated breath (figuratively) to see what you come up with next. I think I arrived at UH just when you left. We miss you here!

[helenas]

What do you think about "Modern Mexican Flavors" by Richard Sandoval?

[skchai]

Instead of of buying books on Mexican food by Anglo writers, why not choose a Mexican chef to learn Mexican food from?

Kennedy is considered to be one of Mexico's foremost culinary authorities, regardless of country of origin. In 2001, the Mexican National Council for Culture and the Arts awarded prizes to the three culinary figures who had done the most to promote and preserve Mexican cookery. The awardess were: the late Guadalupe Perez San Vicente (pioneer in the study of food history), Diana Kennedy and Patricia Quintana. In 2002, there was a second round of awards, to Alicia Bernard, Chepina Peralta, Susanna Palazuelos (author of Mexico the Beautiful Cookbook), and Yuriria Iturriaga. Quintana also has a number of cookbooks out in English, including the coffee-table Taste of Mexico and Mexico's Feasts of Life, both lushly photographed and well-written but unfortunately out of print.

[caroline]

Rachel aka Caroline, I just had to ask: are you now working on a book on Mexican Cookery? How long have you been in Mexico?

[sladeums]

What do you think about "Modern Mexican Flavors" by Richard Sandoval?

Anyone....anyone?

I'm also interested if anyone has any experience with this book.

[Richard Kilgore]

Sandra, Caroline/Rachel, & skchai - Thanks much for the suggestions. You have given me a great book hunting list.

[KNorthrup]

I was thinking that Diana Kennedy was the consultant on the old Time-Life Foods of the World volume (sign of how things change -- Mexico got only part of a book, Latin American Cooking) but it was Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz. I tend to mix them up because I don't actually have books by either. I've always heard Ortiz mentioned in the past in various magazines and such as a reference but then she doesn't come up here. Any particular reason?

[caroline]

I am a big fan of Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. When I first moved to Mexico her Complete Book of Mexican Cooking proved much the most practical introduction to Mexican cooking.

She married a Mexican diplomat and learned to cook the kind of food that (say) Madeleine Kammen made famous for the French, Marcella Hazan for the Italian, or Julie Sahni for the Indian.

She clearly distinguishes the corn kitchen with its indigenous origins from mainstream middle class Mexican cooking which helps begin to sort out the various threads of Mexican cooking. The recipes are short and practical for a working household. She is well thought of by those Mexicans who know her.

So it's a book still worth looking up,

[FoodMan]

I saw Kennedy's "The Art of Mexican Cooking" at a used book store for $5. I'm palnning on picking it up on my way home today. It's hard cover and in good condition. I'm thinking it is certainly worth paying more than that for it (I think Amazon lists it used for $38). No?

Elie

[Richard Kilgore]

Great find. Don't hesitate or it will be gone.

[FoodMan]

Great find. Don't hesitate or it will be gone.

I thought so, that's why I bought it this afternoon before I got home.

Elie

[Jay Francis]

Your question was about which Diana Kennedy book to buy and in answer to that, I would recommend her latest one, with its nice pictures.

There is another great book author, who publishes with a smaller publishing house so he isn't as well known. Jim Peyton has several wonderful books on Mexican cooking out and should be able to find him on amazon.com

Also, Robb Walsh's book comes out soon, The Tex-Mex Cookbook.

[Jay Francis]

Your question was about which Diana Kennedy book to buy and in answer to that, I would recommend her latest one, with its nice pictures.

There is another great book author, who publishes with a smaller publishing house so he isn't as well known. Jim Peyton has several wonderful books on Mexican cooking out and should be able to find him on amazon.com

Also, Robb Walsh's book comes out soon, The Tex-Mex Cookbook.

[theabroma]

The Art of Mexican Cooking - which pretty neatly rolls the ground she covered in Cuisines of Mexico, Recipes from the Regional Cooks, and Tortilla Book all in one.

My second one would be Nothing Fancy ... which is not really Mx but a very personal collection of her favorites, plus a lot of tales and stories ... not all happy (such as the account of returning to NYC with her beloved husband and NY Times Mx City correspondent Paul Kennedy, as he was dying of cancer). Her personal happiness in Paul Kennedy was our public happiness as well: that's how she got to Mx in the first place). In it are the famous Sopa Diana Kennedy, a soup starring epazote, created for her by a friend who knew her love of epazote, and DK's recipe for 'Rougail of Salt Cod' which is a bit of a tedious pain to make, but oh, so incredibly good.

My second Mx. book would, indeed, be either of her last two books.

But best of all, when it comes to DK, chuck restraint to the winds. Get all of her books. I bow at the altar of Julia, for her passion, and her passion to teach us about it; however, I am truly awestruck by DK - as Alma Guillermoprieto has written, this is a woman who literally saved a cuisine. She, and the glorious kitchens of Mexico that so impassioned her, deserve - no, long ago earned - a place of pre-eminence on the world stage.

Theabroma

[ExtraMSG]

You mean Essentials, Sharon?

[theabroma]

You mean Essentials, Sharon?

The only DK book that I do not have is My Mexico (that's more or less the title). I will wind up getting it at some point.

Yes, I meant Essentials and the other one with the yellow cover - cannot think of the proper title, and am not near my bks at the mo'.

Theabroma