My Mexico: A Culinary Odyssey with More Than 300 Recipes [Hardcover]

Every country should have a Diana Kennedy, someone steeped in its culture and cooking who cruises around recording all the local recipes and sharing them with the world. My Mexico is Kennedy's rambling record of forays in pursuit of dishes that might be of interest. Based on the recipes she found, such as Posole de Camarone, a brothy shrimp and dried-corn stew, sweet Green Mango Roll, and tiny new potatoes cooked Shepherd style, Kennedy's travels have been quite fruitful.

Anyone may enjoy the wealth of recipes in this book, but only connoisseurs of Mexican cooking familiar with the varied and regional nature of its food are likely to appreciate the unusual nature of Kennedy's finds. Concentrating on what is unique, the author refers readers to her previous five works on Mexico for fundamental techniques or other background. Even the method for making masa in My Mexico is an uncommon one, presented to Kennedy by the woman who waters her plants.

This literate work is rich in almost novelistic descriptions. Long passages describe her graphic observations. She shares her love of the country where she has lived since 1957 with equal measures of loving passion and curmudgeonly criticism.

Charts and photos help show the variety of chiles and other foods that help give Mexican cooking its constant, often subtle variety. When recipes call for pulque, a mildly fermented juice from the agave plant, sour tunas, a kind of cactus fruit, or other ingredients you can't get, move on to her more accessible dishes or, as Kennedy did, let this book be a journey of discoveries. --Dana Jacobi

In a deeply knowledgeable celebration of the diverse regional cuisines of Mexico, acclaimed gastronome Kennedy (The Cuisines of Mexico, etc.) presents a tour de force, with the emphasis on authenticity. She incorporates family heirloom recipes (e.g., Sra. Redondo's Steamed Tacos Filled with Vermicelli; the Andrea Family's Stuffed Ancho Chiles) with traditional signature dishes of various locales, as well as adaptations of restaurant favorites and classics collected over her 40-year sojourn south of the border. Kennedy divides chapters by geographical region and takes readers on a meandering culinary journey, replete with detailed accounts of local topography, seasons, sights, sounds and scents. Departing from the didactic tone and careful organization of her previous works, Kennedy dispenses with in-depth discussions on ingredients, equipment and technique, referring readers instead to her The Art of Mexican Cooking. While there are condiments like Salsa Verde, Guacamole of Jerez and Jalape?o Chile Relish that even inexperienced cooks can easily render, the recipes, most of which are laborious and involve hard-to-find ingredients, speak largely to well-traveled culinary aficionados or Mexican expats eager to replicate foods of their homeland (e.g., creamy, cheesy Zucchini Michoacan Style; pastry turnovers like Gorditas from Hidalgo; Oaxacan Squash Vine Soup). This book is as much a work of cultural anthropology as it is a recipe reference. Color photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kennedy is widely acknowledged as our preeminent authority on Mexican cooking; her previous cookbooks, including The Art of Mexican Cooking (LJ 8/89), are classics in the field, as her new book is surely destined to be. She first visited Mexico in the late 1950s and has lived there for more than 20 years. Now she offers a culinary journey through the different regions of the country, focusing more on her recent travels but often contrasting them with earlier visits and discoveries. Kennedy is interested not only in the broad culinary history of each region but also in the personal family histories of the cooks (mostly home cooks, but a few chefs, too) she has encountered along the way. Many of these recipes are unusual and have not been recorded anywhere else. Kennedy is passionate about preserving these historical recipes?and indeed whatever culinary traditions still remain as industrialization and development overtake the country?and she has followed her quest from large, thriving city marketplaces to tiny, remote villages. Essential.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kennedy has achieved the status of grand dame of Mexican cooking for those living north of the border. Her previous books explained in detail how Mexican cooking varies from one part of the country to another, and she readied North American palates for the range of chilies that both boldy and subtly flavor Mexican food. Her newest volume takes the reader on another culinary tour across the face of Mexico, moving about the country deliberately, demonstrating how much more there is to Mexican cooking than quotidian tacos. Kennedy's approach is rigorously authentic, but she does allow such substitutions as pork ribs for lizard in a mole of black iguana. To authenticate the long-standing tradition of Mexican cooking, Kennedy includes a selection of recipes from nineteenth-century cookbooks. A necessary addition to international cookery collections. Mark Knoblauch

"Why my Mexico?" asks Diana Kennedy in her introduction to this long-awaited book. The answer is simple and obvious: it is a highly personal book about the Mexico she knows. And no one knows Mexico the way Diana does.     When Diana Kennedy first came to Mexico more than forty years ago, she did not intend to become the country's premier gastronome. But that is what she has become, traveling endlessly, learning the culinary histories of families, hunting elusive recipes, falling under the spell of the beauty of a countryside that produces such a wealth of foods. She has published five books and is referred to variously as the Julia Child, the Escoffier, and the high priestess of Mexican cooking. Most important, she has taken as her eternal project to record not only the wealth of Mexican culinary knowledge and folklore but also the fascinating stories behind it all.

My Mexico records Diana's recent wanderings, along with memories stored away from previous trips.    With wondrous, novelistic prose, Diana tells the story behind her discovery of each dish, from the Pollo Almendrado (Chicken in Almond Sauce) she discovered in Oaxaca to the Estafado de Raya (Skate Stewed in Olive Oil) that delighted her in Coahuila. Yes, there are some fairly simple recipes for inexperienced cooks--look for the new guacamoles and the addictive chilatas. More complicated ones are for aficionados who know the intricacies of the ingredients.      

Times have changed greatly since Diana published her first book. More and more ingredients are available in the U.S., and  more and more people have learned of the true joys of real Mexican cooking. One thing has not changed--Diana Kennedy's passion. For those who already are familiar with her work, this volume is a much-needed addition to your library. For those who are not, you are in for a treat of the first order.

I wanted this book to be different from the others--after all, how many times can you write about chiles, ingredients, and cooking methods? Few people know how amazing the landscape is in the pine-covered highlands or the tropical cloud forests that rise up from the Gulf Coast; even the semi-arid areas are dramatic and colorful in early spring. Several people have told me that while reading My Mexico they feel they are a passenger in my truck as I drive those scenic highways.

I would hope that future generations of Mexican Americans will read My Mexico and be able to picture where their families came from and the food they ate, and imagine the sort of land that produced some of those aromatic herbs and wild greens that I talk about. The extraordinary Swiss chef Fredy Giradet once said: "We must preserve our regional cuisines because they are our culinary foundations."

A few years ago I was doing some articles for a magazine called Mexico Desconocido (Unknown Mexico) in a series called La Receta Rescatada--The Rescued Recipe. I wanted to incorporate them because they form a fascinating part of what I call the "hidden gastronomy of Mexico" which includes many of the free foods found in the wild: how they are gathered and cooked. I feel strongly that this heritage should be recorded since its survival will be linked to sustainable agricultural practices and the conservation of the environment.

--Diana Kennedy, author of My Mexico

Praise for My Mexico

"No other Mexican than our dear Diana could ever take the reader on so intimate and delicious a journey through the villages and towns of Mexico, where cooking is still a sacred art and recipes are handed down from generation to generation."
--Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate

"Every time Diana Kennedy publishes a new book I am delighted. She excites my palate with exotic ingredients and brings me into her incredibly informative world of cooking and foraging. Furthermore, she is a purist and an environmentalist--qualities which I greatly admire."
--Alice Waters, author of Chez Panisse Vegetables

"This is a cookbook to be read without missing a page, not only to savor--and why not try--the wondrous recipes that Diana Kennedy has collected in her wanderings of Mexico's backlands, but also to travel with this intrepidly adventurous author through a fast-changing country that risks losing its soul if it loses its culinary culture. She at least is doing her best to ensure this does not happen by tracing, tasting, recording, and preserving its most authentic cuisine. And reassuringly, in doing so, she demonstrates that, behind the country's rush to modernize, Mexico still remains magically original."
--Alan Riding, author of Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans

Diana Southwood Kennedy went to Mexico in 1957 to marry Paul P. Kennedy, the foreign correspondent for the New York Times. In 1969, at Craig Claiborne's suggestion, she began teaching Mexican cooking classes. She published her first cookbook in 1972 and has been decorated with the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest of its kind bestowed on foreigners by the Mexican government. She lives much of the year in her ecological adobe house in Michoacán, Mexico, which also serves as a research center for Mexican cuisine, and keeps a residence in Austin, Texas.

It is the beginning of May, and the hottest month of all, as I sit down to write this book in my ecological house in San Francisco Coatepec de Morelos, known locally as San Pancho. The sky is hazy with heat and the dust stirred up by the sudden gusts of high winds, with occasional palls of smoke from a forest fire in the mountains to the east. Often these fires are purposely started by clandestine agents scouting timber for the greedy timber merchants who can then go in to clear and to cut or by farmers unattended burning of last years stubble to prepare the land for planting. The hills to the south and west are brown and bare in sharp contrast to the brilliant green valley, where the dam provides irrigation to the low fields around it. This is the month when tempers flare and explode, when young blades and old machos drink up a storm and give primeval screams or shoot off their rounds of ammunition as they saunter through the lanes of San Pancho. There is a heaviness in the air and a sense of foreboding. Will the rains come on time? The signs are anxiously awaited. Heriberto, my nearest neighbor, says he has seen the first aludas, winged ants, that are a sure sign, but the mayates, june bugs, hovering around the lamps and bombarding me at night are still too small. André down at the hotel says the swifts have not yet finished their nests (of course it is hard to know, since he drives them away with a broom because their droppings offend his sense of order--inherited from his French colonialist father). Occasionally the sky will threaten rain toward evening, and the next morning there is a delicious scent of damp undergrowth from the tree-clad mountains above. But when the bullfrogs begin their first intermittent raspings, you know that rain is near. On the other hand, if the rainy season starts too early, the last of the coffee berries will burst and spoil, the tomatoes will rot and never ripen, and too often August, the month in which the ears of corn are filling out, will be dry. At this time of year I bless my adobe house, despite all its drawbacks. It keeps pleasantly cool while the water from the solar collector gives me piping-hot showers. People who live in harsher climates tend to think that there are no seasons here in the semitropics of 5,900 feet. Yes, there's no snow, and just a very occasional frost or brief, gusty hailstorm. January is a bare month, cool and sunny, and if we are in favor with the gods, the first days of February bring welcome rains, cabañuelas, which encourage the plums and peaches to bloom and help top up the tanks for the hot, dry months ahead. The weeks that follow bring the most brilliant-hued flowers of the year: bougainvilleas of all shades, geraniums, amaryllis, cacti and tropical climbers contrasting with the pale blue masses of plumbago, while citrus blossoms perfume the air and my bees are satiated with these aromas. The vegetable garden is at its best. The first delicate peas and fava beans are harvested, and the nopal cactus rows come alive, shooting out their tender and succulent paddles. Carlos, who is in charge outside, cuts the vegetables and collects the blackberries and strawberries a little too early, but, as he explains, we have a host of eager and cunning winged sharecroppers who would leave me nothing if they had their way.

Yesterday he brought in the freshly winnowed crop of wheat. Not much--it was planted on a small patch of poor land--but it's enough for my whole-wheat loaves for the year. Every month brings its own modest harvest, and as the last picking of coffee is completed the small, black indigenous avocados are ready.

The orioles and red throats are scrapping over the mulberries, while the decorative maracua vine outside my study window is alive with its white passion flowers, all facing straight up to the sky with their green antennae to attract the attention of the hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees. The lime tree is heavy with fruit, while the oranges and tangerines are just forming for the summer crop. The stone walls around the house are bedecked with the showy white cereus blossoms of the pitahayas--that most exotic of fruits with shiny, shocking pink skin, pale green hooks, and deep magenta flesh, specked with myriad tiny black seeds.

The little red and yellow plums will ripen in the next months, next to the brilliant-colored tamarillos and the last of the citrons. As May draws to an end, it is the time to plant the corn and ask for the irrigation water that flows down through a maze of open canals through the orchards and pastures of my neighbors. The water comes from springs in land owned higher up by a nearby village and is shared between them, my neighbors, and the community lands down by the dam.

Calabacitas con Hongos--Squash with Mushrooms
Makes 4 to 6 servings

This is my all out favorite dish. Even without the cream and cheese it makes a delicious vegetable side dish and with all the rich things, served in individual gratin dishes, makes a wonderful first course or main vegetarian course. I have modified the cooking method given to me. By cooking the mushrooms separately, the flavor is intensified. The small tender clavitos (Leophyllum decastes) literally "little nails" known as Fried Chicken mushrooms in the U.S., are my preferred mushroom for this recipe, but any small, juicy mushroom may be substituted.

1 pound (450 gms) zucchini or green squash
3 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 heaped tablespoons finely chopped white onion
1 large poblano chile, charred, peeled, cleaned and cut into narrow strips
salt to taste
1/2 pound (225 gms) mushrooms (see note above) rinsed and shaken dry
1/2 cup (125 ml) loosely packed, coarsely chopped cilantro
4 ounces (115 gms) queso fresco or domestic Muenster cut into thin slices
1/2 to 3/4 cup (125-188 ml) crème fraîche

Rinse, trim and cut squash into 1/4-inch (3/4 cm) cubes. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil, add the onion and chile strips with a sprinkle of salt and cook without browning for about 1 minute. Add the squash, cover the pan and cook over a medium heat, shaking the pan from time to time to avoid sticking, until the squash is almost tender -about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, toss the mushrooms in the remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil, sprinkle with salt and stir fry for about 5 minutes or until the juice that exudes has become almost gelatinous. Add to the squash. Sprinkle the top of the vegetables with the cilantro, cover with cheese and cream. Cover the pan and cook over a gentle heat for about 5 minutes until the cheese has melted.

Botana de Papas Locas--Crazy Potato Snack

Makes 1 pound
Although small red-skinned potatoes were served that day at the ranch, the word loca refers to the very small, light-skinned potatoes that grow wild in the hills in the northern part of the Bajío: Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and part of Guanajuato.

1 pound (450 gms) very small new potatoes, unpeeled
salt to taste
1/4 cup (63 ml) vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium white onions, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons powdered chile de árbol or pulla
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Put the potatoes into a heavy pan, cover with water, add salt and vinegar and cook covered over a medium flame until just tender-about 20 minutes. Drain.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan, add the potatoes and fry until slightly browned-about 5 minutes. Add the onions and chile powder and continue frying, stirring them from time to time, taking care that the onions do not burn-about 5 minutes. Add the lime juice and serve still warm with toothpicks.

Chilatas--No translation
Makes 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) loosely packed

Chilatas is a textured powder of toasted and ground seeds seasoned with chile and salt. It is sprinkled over a freshly made corn tortilla or a dish of beans. I even use it on salads. It is delicious, healthy, crunchy and addictive.

1/3 cup (83 ml) shelled peanuts
1/2 cup (125 ml) sesame seeds
1/2 cup (125 ml) raw, hulled pumpkin seeds
1/8 teaspoon powdered, hot, dried chiles (not chile powder mixed with other condiments)
1/2 teaspoon or to taste, medium coarse seasalt

Toast each of the seeds separately in a heavy pan, taking care not to let them get too brown. set aside to cool. Grind them separately in an electric coffee/spice grinder to a textured consistency. Mix together with the chile and salt and store in a dry place in an airtight container. It keeps indefinitely.