Thank You Forever, Diana Kennedy, For Helping Preserve Traditional Mexican Cuisine

I was saddened to read that Diana Kennedy, the leading authority on traditional Mexican cuisine and food published in English, passed away on July 24 at the age of 99. She always said she would live to be 100 years old. I thought you’d live forever.

Her first cookbook, cuisines of mexico, it had just celebrated its 50th anniversary in June, having sold nearly 100,000 copies and been widely credited for expanding the world’s understanding of traditional Mexican cooking. However, as social media goes, people (most likely non-Mexicans) were quick to label him a neo-colonialist and accused him of cultural appropriation. Let me direct you all.

Diana loved Mexico and was fiercely protective of our cuisine and environment. She produced nine published cookbooks, filled with recipes carefully sourced from traditional Mexican cooks from all 32 states. Independent to a fault, she drove her quirky pickup truck and traveled herself up and down the country, from the seashore to the sierra, to make sure even the smallest town’s recipes and ingredients were known and preserved.

She tirelessly detailed endemic edible plants, their flavors and culinary uses in a way that neither Mexican botanists nor chefs ever did. Without her work, many of these ancestral ingredients and recipes would be lost forever. For her work, she received the honors of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor given by the Mexican government to foreign nationals, and the Order of the British Empire.

Eat it, social media.

For me, her tireless research and dogmatic stance on tradition was affirming as a young Mexican cook and, later, as a food writer and researcher.

The first time I met Diana, I was blown away. Not just because of her rock star status as a cookbook author, but because of the way she, in her 70s, kept everyone under control. Thought is too soft a word for Diana. A relentless critic and perfectionist, she would never shy away from expressing disdain, even disgust, for things that didn’t fit her views, from food to politics.

My first experience with this trait of hers came in 1999, when, as a young food writer and recent anthropology graduate, an essay I submitted to a writing competition sponsored by the University of Oxford won an honorable mention and was published. in the prestigious. Kitchen notes, a serious food history publication. My topic was the history of the tamale.

Along with several copies of the publication came a letter of congratulations, signed by none other than the great food historian Alan Davidson. “I thought you might like to read her comment,” he said. Enclosed in the envelope was a four-page, scathing critique of my essay from Diana Kennedy. It was a miracle I didn’t pass out.

I was lucky enough to meet her in person at Austin’s legendary Fonda San Miguel in the early 2000s. In the late 70s, Diana helped owners Tom Gilliland and partner Miguel Ravago, Fonda’s late founding chef, create the menu for the pioneering in-house restaurant Mexican. I introduced myself and she, searching the banks of her still sharp memory, remembered to critique my essay. Hours of conversation followed.

A few years later she agreed to participate in a lecture series that I curated and helped organize with the University of Texas Department of Latin American Studies. She completely refused to let us record the presentation, stating that she “didn’t want people to steal her research”, and even thought her slides were over 40 years old. I had hoped to visit her at Quinta Diana, the ecological and sustainable home she built near Zitacuaro, Michoacan, but our schedules never coincided—or perhaps, she wanted to keep it that way. She was always suspicious of, or jealous of, other women food writers—even Mexican ones.

After the success of Julie and Julia, I thought I would do the same with cuisines of mexico, of which I have two editions. But since many of the ingredients are only found in Mexico, and at that, in specific regions and seasons, it proved difficult to make in Texas. And I had no desire to trouble him, instead of honoring him, with my effort.

On our last visit together I asked her to let me write her biography. “Nobody’s interested in that,” she said quite seriously. She wouldn’t move.

In 2019 she returned to Texas to donate her collection of cookbooks, personal notes and correspondence to the University of Texas at San Antonio. At a meet and greet at Fonda in Austin, for the first time since I’d known her, she looked frail and tired. Surrounded by adoring fans wanting their books autographed, I chose not to overwhelm her any further.

“Many of the recipes at Fonda San Miguel were inspired by our dear friend Diana Kennedy, who liked to describe herself as the ‘Mick Jagger of Mexican cuisine,'” Gilliland wrote on Fonda’s Facebook page alongside a candid photo of Kennedy hung in the restaurant. . “It captures the authority of Mexican cuisine as Fonda San Miguel will remember it: living its life on its own terms, as much as its passion for Mexican food and its people. Long live Diana Kennedy!”

Really.