Diana Kennedy, a tart-tongued British food writer devoted to Mexican cuisine, died Sunday.
Her first cookbook, “The Cuisines of Mexico,” was written during long hours with home cooks across Mexico. It established Kennedy as the foremost authority on traditional Mexican cooking and remains the seminal work on the subject even four decades later. She described it as a gastronomy that humbled her and she credited those -- usually women -- who shared their recipes with her.
Kennedy was born with an instinctive curiosity and love of food. She grew up in the United Kingdom eating what she called “good food, whole food,” if not a lot of food. During World War II, she was assigned to the Women Timber Corps, where food was simple and sometimes sparse — homemade bread, fresh cream, scones and berries on good days, nettle soup or buttered green beans when rations were lean.
Indeed, that first mango and her husband, Paul Kennedy, a New York Times correspondent, arrived in her life around the same time. He was on assignment in Haiti, she was traveling there. They fell in love and in 1957 she joined him in Mexico, where he was assigned. She was known for her sharp-tongue commentary, even as her pioneering work helped turn Mexico into a culinary mecca for foodies and the world’s top chefs, and transformed a cuisine long dismissed as tortillas suffocated in heavy sauces, cheeses and sour cream.
“Many of them are using it as a novelty and do not know the things that go together,” she said. “If you are going to play around with ingredients, exotic ingredients, you’ve got to know how to treat them.”
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