From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients
by Diana Kennedy

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Book Reviews of From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients

Book Review: Mexican Cuisine Gets a Brilliant Presentation
Summary: 5 Stars

The book is much more than a collection of recipes. In many ways, it is a Larousse Gastronomique for Mexico, with all of the weight of authority that name carries,including sections on:

Menus - A small section, very informative for Mexican newbies, but not very deep.
Ingredients - All sections are deep and rewarding.
- Dairy
- Fats
- Chiles
- Herbs
- Vegetables and Fruits
- Meats
- Grains (Rice and Pasta)
- Seasonings
Techniques - Exceptional, doubly so because it includes both weights and metric units of measure.
- Antojitos
- Moles
- Table Sauces
- Tamales
- Tortillas
- Vinegar
- Yeast Breads
Utensils Native to Mexico - Some blemishes here. See below
Mexican Food Terms - Some blemishes.
Sources of Ingredients - By state in the US.

Note that unlike the situation with French and Italian ingredients, Ms. Kennedy generally has a low opinion of the quality of Mexican ingredients available in the United States. This makes it doubly useful that she has provided the means of making several of these base ingredients in the home.

As Diana points out in the introduction, she is both the food stylist and the hand model for all of the excellent photographs by Michael Calderwood. The photographs clearly enhance the value of the book.

I am not very familiar with Mexican techniques myself, so, to evaluate the recipes, I concentrated on the baking sections and can say that they are worthy of the best presentations I have seen by baking specialists. In baking even more than with other techniques, measuring by weight, more especially measuring by the more precise metric scale, is essential to achieving consistant results, and Ms. Kennedy gives you the `full 9 meters' to good measuring, tempered by techniques to compensate for humidity. It even includes some tips I have not found in books dedicated to baking.

One of the greatest and most unexpected pleasures to be found by reading this book is the sense Ms. Kennedy gives you of her belonging to a community of cookbook authors. She does not simply drop names. She cites and credits people like Julia Child and Paula Wolfert for their insights and facts uncovered. The thrill is not so much in acquiring this information as it is in seeing the author and her subject placed within a broader world of culinary ethnology.

There are three sections to the book which could have benefited from some judicious copy editing. The first is the introduction where many Mexican terms and locations are used before they were explained. It would have been better to place this section after the section entitled `Mexico'. The second is the Mexican Food Terms section. It is said that some terms cannot be translated into English, yet the explanation of the term does not succeed in really communicating the sense of the term. The third is the `Utensils Native to Mexico' where a similar problem occurs. A term has no English equivalent, yet the book does not provide a picture of the utensil, even though pictures of translated terms have excellent pictures accompanying the text. Don't get me wrong, this section is very, very good. It just has some things which could be better. One last criticism, also in the pervue of a copy editor, is some awkward word usage, such as when people `waft' between Mexico and the US. Doesn't work for me.

A rare but excellent feature of this book is the references to recipes and techniques in Ms. Kennedy's earlier books. I'm sure this can be annoying for someone who does not own these books, but it ultimately adds to the value of the present value as well as enhancing the value of her earlier books. At the very least, it means you are not paying for things which have been published elsewhere. I can think of more than a few cookbook writers who would benefit from this feature.

Anyone who has any interest in Mexican cuisine will be richly rewarded by reading this book from cover to cover. Anyone who has a general interest in good cookbook writing will be rewarded by reading this book from cover to cover. Anyone who has an interest in the origins of cuisine will find much here, but this is a cookbook, not a book of history or linguistics. Anyone with an interest in trying new types of baking (or suggestions on how to write a good baking recipe) will find many rewards here. I would look to this book before executing any Mexican recipe by any author. This is a book against which others should be judged. I would hope other authors would go to school on this volume.

Summary of From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients

The chapter headings include: "Cheeses and Cream"; "Cooking Fats and Oils"; "Fresh and Dried Chiles"; "Fresh and Dried Herbs"; "Vegetables, Beans, and Fruits"; "Meat, Poultry, and Seafood"; "Rice and Pasta"; "Making Antojitos"; "Making Moles"; "Making Table Sauces"; "Making Tamales"; "Making Tortillas"; "Making Vinegar"; "Making Yeast Breads"; and "Utensils". You'll find precise descriptions of ingredients as well as glowing illustrations, the techniques you need to prep any ingredients, and classic recipes to pull it all together. There's also a glossary of cooking terms and sources for various ingredients.

This is a beautifully laid out and illustrated reference text. Probably no one but Diana Kennedy could produce such a book, in English. Her voice, as ever, is clear and demanding, her instructions thorough and determined. She's a true instructor. Trust yourself to her care and you can rest assured that the foods you produce will be as close to the real thing as anyone working in print media can get you. It's Diana Kennedy's magic at work. --Schuyler Ingle

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