Product Description

Diana Kennedy has been called the “ultimate authority, the high priestess” of Mexican cooking, and with good reason. For more than forty years she has traveled through her beloved adoptive country, researching and recording its truly extraordinary cuisine. Now Diana turns her attention to the book she readily admits “should have been written years ago.”

Diana’s objective in From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients is simple: to provide a guide to better understanding the ingredients Mexico has to offer and how best to prepare them. Her execution is little short of brilliant.

The book is invaluable to the novice eager for an introduction to Mexican cooking, but it is equally important for the aficionados interested in refining and expanding their knowledge and skills.

From My Mexican Kitchen takes readers and cooks on a tour of the primary ingredients of the cuisine, from achiote and avocado leaves to hoja santa, huauzontle, and the sour tunas called xoconostles—which are increasingly available in the United States. Diana unravels the dizzying array of fresh and dried chiles, explaining their uses and preparation; vibrant color photographs at last take the guesswork out of identifying them!

Step-by-step photographs and Diana’s trademark instructions (peppered with her over-the-shoulder asides) lead us through the proper techniques for making moles, tamales, tortillas, and much more. Some highlights: chiles rellenos, frijoles de olla, salsa de jitomate, fresh corn tamales from Michoacán, and bolillos (Mexican bread rolls). These recipes provide a solid grounding for the new Mexican cook, and Diana then sends readers to her earlier work for more advanced regional recipes.

Brilliantly photographed, with a text at once lively and authoritative, Diana Kennedy’s From My Mexican Kitchen is the one book anyone interested in this food cannot afford to be without.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #213895 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-09
• Released on: 2003-09-09
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 10.35" h x 1.00" w x 7.90" l, 2.75 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Amazon.com
Diana Kennedy published her first cookbook in 1972. It was about Mexican food. She has been learning more and writing more ever since. From My Mexican Kitchen takes the reader by the hand and explores the indigenous ingredients that make Mexican food come alive, as well as the techniques handed down through the centuries for the right way to handle those ingredients. It's a book to combine with another, Kennedy's The Essential Cuisines of Mexico, for example.

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

From Publishers Weekly
Kennedy has often been termed the Julia Child of Mexican cuisine, and the comparison is almost inescapable in this competent, humorous and balanced guide to the techniques needed to create foods indigenous to Mexico. Kennedy, acclaimed author of three other standard-setting Mexican cookbooks, has been studying the country's food since 1957 and now lives there for much of the year. In the first part, the book focuses on ingredients, while the second part focuses on techniques, and both have recipes interspersed throughout. One of the fine qualities that Child and Kennedy share is a judicious outlook on fat: Kennedy instructs readers to "forget about cholesterol when you are next having breakfast in a Mexican market" and indulge in natas, a form of clotted cream. A comprehensive chapter on the many types of chiles could almost stand alone as a primer on the topic, and another on beans offers recipes for several types of refried beans, including Yucatecan Sieved Beans. In the introduction to a chapter on mole in the techniques section, Kennedy corrects the misperception that it's a kind of "chocolate sauce," and then she goes on to provide instructions for Mole Poblano and Mole Verde. The more complicated recipes are accompanied by useful step-by-step photographs, but it's Kennedy's no-nonsense tone that makes her both a trusted guide and a delight to read. This volume is encyclopedic in the sense that it is fantastically complete, but it is also utterly reader-friendly because it is so highly personal and helpfully detailed.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
To answer the question "Why doesn't my Mexican food taste as good as it does in Mexico?" cooks can now turn to Diana Kennedy's From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients to learn everything there is to know about Mexican ingredients and cooking techniques from every province of the nation. Kennedy starts with a detailed, illustrated glossary of ingredients that is a boon to those seeking these items in grocery stores. Kennedy provides techniques and recipes for dealing with each of these exotica. Truly curious and ambitious cooks can even produce their own chorizo, Mexico's fresh, spicy pork sausage. Working with text and pictures, she explains how to produce authentic enchiladas, tacos, tamales, sopes, panuchos, and other Mexican classics. Kennedy also provides a guide to wild greens, items rarely seen outside provincial markets. Her advice on freezing excess quantities of cuitlacoche (corn fungus) will reward fans of that uncommon mushroom. This is an indispensable addition to any library cookbook collection. Mark Knoblauch
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