The Cuisines of Mexico is the first of Diana Kennedy's nine cookbooks, credited with introducing Americans to Mexican food beyond Tex-Mex.
The book was the result of Kennedy’s love of Mexican food, which she discovered when she moved to Mexico City to live with her husband, New York Times reporter Paul P. Kennedy, in 1957. The couple moved to New York City by the end of 1965, with Paul dying in 1967 of cancer. [1] [2]
To make a living, Kennedy began teaching Mexican cooking classes in her Upper West Side apartment, with the cuisine quite novel at the time. [1] [2] Although New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne once mentioned to her that she should write a Mexican cookbook and encouraged her cooking classes. The book began to come together after then-poetry editor at Harper and Row Fran McCullough took one of her classes and offered to be her editor. The two would eventually work on Kennedy’s first five cookbooks. [1] [3] [2] Although Kennedy had been collecting recipes since her time in Mexico City, she decided to go to Mexico to do further research. [1] This research, she believed, was what separated her from other cookbook writers in that she has taken the time and effort to explore Mexico and do field research on how the cuisine varies. [4]
Kennedy did not have any prior writing experience before the book, but after several rewrites, she published The Cuisines of Mexico in 1972. This book became a best-seller and is still one of the most authoritative single volumes on Mexican cooking. [1] [5]
It began to change Americans' understanding of Mexican food, expanding it beyond Tex-Mex into the various regional cuisines and dishes, [6] [5] and is the basis of establishing authentic Mexican food in the United States. [3] The contents of this book along with two that followed, The Tortilla Book and Mexican Regional Cooking, were compiled in 2000 into The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. However, this compilation took out many of the original book's stories and photographs. [7] The 1986 revision of the original book was re-printed and is still available. [8]
Tex-Mex cuisine is an American cuisine that derives from the culinary creations of the Tejano people of Texas. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United States to the rest of the country. It is a subtype of Southwestern cuisine found in the American Southwest.
Diana Kennedy MBE was a British food writer. The preeminent English-language authority on Mexican cuisine, Kennedy was known for her nine books on the subject, including The Cuisines of Mexico, which changed how Americans view Mexican cuisine. Her cookbooks are based on her fifty years of travelling in Mexico, interviewing and learning from several types of cooks from virtually every region of the nation.
Refried beans is a dish of cooked and mashed beans that is a traditional staple of Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine, although each cuisine has a different approach when making the dish. Refried beans are also popular in many other Latin American countries. The English "refried beans" is a mistranslation, since the essence of "frijoles refritos" is the reheating and mashing of the beans.
The cuisine of the Southwestern United States is food styled after the rustic cooking of the Southwestern United States. It comprises a fusion of recipes for things that might have been eaten by Spanish colonial settlers, cowboys, Native Americans, and Mexicans throughout the post-Columbian era; there is, however, a great diversity in this kind of cuisine throughout the Southwestern states.
Stuffed peppers is a dish common in many cuisines. It consists of hollowed or halved peppers filled with any of a variety of fillings, often including meat, vegetables, cheese, rice, or sauce. The dish is usually assembled by filling the cavities of the peppers and then cooking.
Eileen Yin-Fei Lo was a chef. She authored eleven cookbooks on Chinese cuisine.
Joan Nathan is an American cookbook author and newspaper journalist. She has produced TV documentaries on the subject of Jewish cuisine. She was a co-founder of New York's Ninth Avenue Food Festival under then-Mayor Abraham Beame. The Jerusalem Post has called her the "matriarch of Jewish cooking".
Duchess potatoes consist of a purée of mashed potato, egg yolk, and butter, which is forced from a piping bag or hand-moulded into various shapes which are then baked in a high temperature oven until golden. They are typically seasoned similarly to mashed potatoes with, for example, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. They are a classic item of French cuisine, and are found in historic French cookbooks.
Fuchsia Dunlop is an English writer and cook who specialises in Chinese cuisine, especially Sichuan cuisine. She is the author of five books, including the autobiographical Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper (2008). According to Julia Moskin in The New York Times, Dunlop "has done more to explain real Chinese cooking to non-Chinese cooks than anyone".
Corinne Trang is an author of Asian-themed cookbooks.
Tex-Mex cuisine is very popular in Houston. Many Mexican cuisine restaurants in Houston have aspects that originate from Texas culture. Katharine Shilcutt of the Houston Press said in 2012 that "Tex-Mex has been a vital part of our city for more than 100 years" and that it "never waned in that century." She added that "[t]he cultural significance of Tex-Mex as a vital touchstone between generations and an expression of our roots cannot be denied."
Texan cuisine is the food associated with the Southern U.S. state of Texas, including its native Southwestern cuisine influenced Tex-Mex foods. Texas is a large state, and its cuisine has been influenced by a wide range of cultures, including Tejano/Mexican, Native American, Creole/Cajun, African-American, German, Czech, Southern and other European American groups.
Patricia Jinich is a Mexican chef, TV personality, cookbook author, educator, and food writer. She is best known for her James Beard Award-winning and Emmy-nominated public television series Pati's Mexican Table. Her first cookbook, also titled Pati's Mexican Table, was published in March 2013, her second cookbook, Mexican Today, was published in April 2016, and her third cookbook, Treasures of the Mexican Table, was published in November 2021.
Andrea Nguyen is a Vietnamese-born, American teacher, food writer, cookbook author and chef living in the San Francisco area. An expert on Asian cuisine and cooking methods, Nguyen has written numerous cookbooks on the food of her native Vietnam, as well as an account of her family's escape during the Fall of Saigon. She writes an active blog, as well as articles for newspapers and food magazines and teaches cooking classes throughout the country.
Lois Ellen Frank is an American food historian, cookbook author, culinary anthropologist, and educator. She won a 2003 James Beard Foundation Award for her cookbook Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, the first cookbook of Native American cuisine so honored.
Josef Centeno is an American chef, restaurateur and cookbook author who specializes in Tex-Mex cuisine. He was nominated for a James Beard award for Best Chef in February 2020.
Josefina Velázquez de León was a Mexican cook, researcher, writer and teacher. Velázquez de León was a pioneer of Mexican gastronomy and an entrepreneur of Mexican cuisine.
Nawal Nasrallah is a U.S.-based Iraqi food writer, food historian, English literature scholar, and translator from Arabic into English. She is best known for her cookbook featuring Iraqi cuisine, entitled Delights from the Garden of Eden, and for editions of medieval Arabic cookbooks, including Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens, an annotated translation of the tenth-century, Abbasid-era cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. She has won numerous awards for her writing and her translations.
Louisa Shafia is an American chef and cookbook author. Her 2009 cookbook Lucid Food focuses on local and sustainable eating. The New Persian Kitchen (2013) features traditional Persian dishes as well as reinterpretations.
The Essential New York Times Cookbook is a cookbook published by W. W. Norton & Company and authored by former The New York Times food editor Amanda Hesser. The book was originally published in October 2010 and contains over 1,400 recipes from the past 150 years in The New York Times, all of which were tested by Hesser and her assistant, Merrill Stubbs, prior to the book's publication. The book has recipes dating from the mid 1850s, when The New York Times first began publishing topics about food and recipes.