Kennedy - My Mexico : a culinary odyssey with recipes

Also by the Author

The Cuisines of Mexico

The Tortilla Book

Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico

(published later as Mexican Regional Cooking)

Nothing Fancy

The Art of Mexican Cooking

The Essential Cuisines of Mexico

(a compilation of The Cuisines of Mexico, The Tortilla Book, and Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico, with new recipes)

From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients

Oaxaca al gusto

PRAISE FOR My Mexico

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 environmentalistqualities which I greatly admire.

ALICE WATERS, OWNER OF CHEZ PANISSE AND AUTHOR OF CHEZ PANISSE COOKING AND THE ART OF SIMPLE FOOD

This is a cookbook to be read without missing a page, not only to savorand why not trythe wondrous recipes that Diana Kennedy has collected in her wanderings of Mexicos 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 countrys rush to modernize, Mexico still remains magically original.

ALAN RIDING, AUTHOR OF DISTANT NEIGHBORS: A PORTRAIT OF THE MEXICANS

Open any pages of My Mexico and be transported to a waking dream.

FOOD AND WINE

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

In a deeply knowledgeable celebration of the diverse regional cuisines of Mexico, acclaimed gastronome Kennedy presents a tour de force, with the emphasis on authenticity. She incorporates family heirloom recipes... with traditional signature dishes of various locales, as well as adaptations of restaurant favorites and classics collected over her forty-year sojourn south of the border.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Many of these recipes are unusual and have not been recorded anywhere else. Kennedy is passionate about preserving these historical recipesand indeed whatever culinary traditions still remain as industrialization and development overtake the countryand she has followed her quest from large, thriving city market-places to tiny, remote villages. Essential.

LIBRARY JOURNAL

THE WILLIAM & BETTYE NOWLIN SERIES
in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere

MY MEXICO

A Culinary Odyssey with Recipes

BY DIANA KENNEDY

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

UPDATED EDITION

University of Texas Press
Austin

Copyright 1998, 2013 by Diana Kennedy

All rights reserved

First edition, 1998

University of Texas Press edition, 2013

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:

Permissions

University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

Austin, TX 787137819

http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Diana.

My Mexico : a culinary odyssey with recipes / by Diana Kennedy Updated edition.

p. cm (The William and Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere)

Includes indices.

ISBN 978-0-292-74840-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Cooking, Mexican. 2. MexicoSocial life and customs. I. Title.

TX716.M4K467 2013

641.5972dc23 2013000936

ISBN 978-0-292-75446-1 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-75447-8 (individual e-book)

DOI:10.7560/748408

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY GREAT INDEBTEDNESS TO THOSE WHO ENCOURAGED me, contributed recipes, or helped me as I journeyed once again around Mexico, especially: Violet Gershenson; Carmen Ramrez Degollado; Mara Dolores Torres Yzabal; Pina Hamilton de Crdoba, Oaxaca; Oscar Kaufman, Campeche; Fernando del Moral Muriel, Aguascalientes; Mara Redondo de Williams; Guadalupe Lpez de Lara de Zorilla; Lic. Antonio Tiro y Sra.

I am most grateful to my editor at the University of Texas Press, Casey Kittrell, for agreeing to republish this book. I also wish to thank Ellen McKie and Victoria Davis.

INTRODUCTION

Why MY MEXICO? IT SOUNDS RATHER ARROGANT and possessive, doesnt it? Well, the title came to me in a flashand the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed. After all, this book is about the Mexico I know. It is a highly personal, somewhat lopsided view from other peoples kitchens, where I seem to have spent an awful lot of time talking about food or actually cooking and eating with the families I visit.

When I first came to Mexico in 1957, I didnt come as an anthropologist or to study the costumes, dances, fiestas, or pyramids that continue to fascinate and attract people from other lands. I came to get married to a foreign correspondent based in Mexico. The plan was to live there for a few years before moving on to some other beat. I brought with me no particular talent, just a love of good food and an abounding curiosity and restlessness. I was immediately enthralled by the markets and the exotic ingredients; very soon I fell under the spell of the incredible beauty of the countryside that produced such a wealth of foods. I could never get enough of those early journeys into remote parts of the country and still cannot, even today. Soon I had to admit to a very strong addiction to Mexico.

Ever since, my life in Mexico has for the most part been, or has seemed to be, a series of fascinating adventures, most of them culinary. Of course I have had my disappointments, my surprises and delights, and many fruitless journeys during those years, but it has never been boring. There has never been a moment that I can remember in which I didnt have plans for yet another search for some unrecorded recipe, fabled regional cook, or elusive herb or chile.

I am never happier than when I am off somewhere in my truck discovering new things, for long ago I came to the realization that the wealth of Mexican foodstuffs and the variety of ways in which they are prepared are inexhaustible. And the more I travel, the more I realize that most families, even in the smallest communities, have a culinary history: recipes and methods handed down from one generation to another. If all this had been recorded over the years, it would reveal a lot about the changes in these societies through good times and bad, changes in climate and therefore agriculture, and the effects of the political and social influences brought about by workers coming and going between the larger cities and the United States. There is also a great deal of creativity among the cooks (usually women), using their skill and imagination to transform the monotony of the daily basic foods and, when the budget allows it, adding a few delicacies to make the occasional meal more festive. I am always urging cooks I meet to write down (if they can write) the basics of their recipes and demonstrate them to a younger member of the family who can take more detailed notes, so that this knowledge is not lost in the changes that are beginning to infiltrate, and that I fear will invade, Mexico.