Diana Kennedy

Culinary Lightning Rod

My book that I bought in 1972

Diana Kennedy died last week at the age of 99. She had been researching and writing about the Cuisines of Mexico for 70+ years. The “s” in that title was a revolution for those outside of Mexico.

In 1972 I was nineteen years old and as besotted with Mexican food as a young woman raised in LA could be at that time. Masa was and continues to be my Proustian madeleine. It was also the year Diana Kennedy's book The Cuisines of Mexico was published. I bought it, scoured every page and started cooking my way through it. It was my recreational reading for a full year. In 1974 I heard she was teaching cooking classes in New York City at Peter Kump's school and I signed up for a class. I had the money for the class and the airfare because I had been working since I was thirteen, socking whatever extra money I had away. That was the first cooking class I ever took and it was a foundational experience for me. It was the first time I heard about nixtamalization, what it meant, how to make it and how to use the masa created from it. One of the dishes on our class schedule was a chile relleno made with the biggest poblano peppers I’d ever seen. They were stuffed with a picadillo made with candied pumpkin and other fruits. I'll never forget the way it tasted. It was exceptional. The food I had been accustomed to eating at that time wasn't only combo plate food, although there was a lot of that, but I hadn't ever tasted anything like what she presented. The class wasn't only a revelation from a gastronomic point of view. Kennedy was unlike any woman I'd met. Unapologetically opinionated without the need to soften a statement with humor or self-deprecation (my stock and trade). She required total attention (not like today's classes that are often seen as a social opportunities to chit chat with friends.) Marcella Hazan's whistle was famous for bringing her students into line. Ms. Kennedy simply fixed you with a stare. I never wanted that gaze to fix on me, but I did want to be her. An authority, someone who had clearly committed to a life she was creating despite the obstacles which I can only imagine were considerable given how women were fighting for equality back then.

Today we are rightly concerned with representation and credited authorship especially when it comes to home and farm centered cooks who are the backbone of passing down traditional recipes everywhere in the world. But there are also the communicators, the writers who fall under a spell and like detectives must discover a flavor, a dish, an ingredient and chase it down, write it down then share it with people beyond that home or farm in a small village, town or city.  That they were and are privileged to have the time and resources to do so is undeniable. Many of the women who did this kind of culinary research and writing like Paula Wolfert, Joan Nathan and Julia Child for example had husbands who earned the primary living for the family, at least for awhile. Some of these men were had jobs working outside the US which gave the wives unusual access. But not every traveling spouse takes up residence in the place of her culinary eden, or becomes a noted cookbook author. It takes fierceness and a willingness to cross lines that women were not supposed to cross.

It's good to remember that Diana's deep love of the cuisines of Mexico began seven decades ago. Her initial influence and celebrity took place in an analog world, a world of words and very few pictures. If you had a cookbook with eight color photographs in the middle you were lucky. People like myself who were hungry for information about food and culture found it chiefly in major newspapers, magazines and cookbooks, often borrowed from libraries. You had to put in some effort to acquire knowledge. The world of nearly unlimited access to information and people that we have today didn't exist. So cookbook authors who were amateur anthropologists and communicators through the cookbook medium, like Diana was were crucial. At a basic level they transmitted knowledge, but more than that they shared a singular, obsessive passion. People say, yes she credited the cooks she learned from but they didn't become famous like she did. That’s true. But several decades ago you needed an obsessive drive combined with attributes that often made others characterize you as “opinionated” or “attention seeking” “aggressive”, a “loudmouth” “prickly,” or my favorite, “difficult.” The need for external acknowledgment is not universal and to achieve the kind of mixed attention Diana Kennedy received was the result of decades of dogged work often in obscurity. Obscurity is more difficult to find now. Sometimes I wonder if that’s a good or a bad thing.

I spoke to two people about Diana’s life and legacy for Good Food. You can find the interviews here.