Customer Reviews

Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy (William & Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I just bought this book and thought I'd share a useful, informative viewpoint that I wish I had the benefit of reading prior to making this purchase.
There's no doubt this is a beautiful book: hefty, easy to read glossy pages, ample pictures, numerous recipes.
HOWEVER... I judge a book's usefulness (to me) as how many recipes I think I will actually make.
A quick page through this book and it's clear there are VERY FEW.
It's a wonderful historic book that documents real recipes from the region (Offal, pig's head, iguana) and uses ingredients (with no substitutions) that are unaccessible (pozol leaf, yuca, cherimole, pasta de pluma, ouzi, chichilo...). The glossary gives little hint toward finding something that might be able to be used in place of something that we find unavailable outside the region, and merely gives a description of what 'it' is. The glossary is very abbreviated (and for instance does not even include any of those aforementioned ingredients). The index is sorted by region and is in Spanish. So if you saw a pork dish when you were looking through the book's 400 pages, the index will do little to help you find it again.

Diana Kennedy is a talented explorer of the Mexican culture and generous in her ability to provide us with a sense of it's recipes. I use her books as reference guides and bibles for Mexican cuisine. I understand that she wanted this book to be her book, to cover the 'real' Oaxaca her way, despite guidance from book publishers who wanted to make it more sellable. She's gained her fame and fortune, and is a place in her life where she is not desperate for the money off a book and can instead make decisions based on her heart and soul. I get all that. Good for here for standing by her principles.
However, had I had the opportunity review this book prior to purchasing, I would never have bought it, as I see myself rarely using it.

I have had the pleasure of taking a cooking class with Diana Kennedy at her home in Michoacan (an incredible experience). Her knowledge of Mexican cooking is second to none. Many of the recipes in this book are perhaps beyond the reach of most home cooks, however it is so rewarding to read the book and share in the adventures of gathering the recipes, and learn about regional village life. Diana's obvious love of the natural world and how each region makes use of what is available locally, is the backbone of this work. This book once again proves the wonderful generosity of the Mexican people, and their willingness to share regardless of their wealth. This is a remarkable collection of the traditional regional cuisines of Oaxaca, to be treasured and read and re-read. Bravo Diana!

I was so excited to finally get my copy of Kennedy's newest cookbook. I've only has it for a day and already I am making my shopping list for the dishes I want to try. Having been to Oaxaca a few times, I want to relive old favorites and also try to prepare some of the more esoteric recipes. This cook is an amazing cornucopia of that regions wonderful foods and cultures.
My only complaint? The size and weight of the book itself. The format is coffee table style (providing that your coffee table is sturdy).
The weight makes the book unwieldy and difficult to use in a kitchen setting. I much prefer the way her other books were printed... easier to work with it a kitchen that will become cluttered when you get into working with Kennedy's recipes. That said, I am happy with the book overall and am ready to expand my Oaxacan culinary abilities.

For serious students of Mexican cuisine, Oaxaca holds a certain fascination. As one of the poorest and most indigenous regions of Mexico, Oaxaca is where one finds the food ways that pre-date the arrival of the Spanish. It is this Pre-Columbian tradition that leads many food writers to believe that Oaxaca has the most "authentic" and profound Mexican food.

As earlier reviewers have noted there are plenty of recipes in "Oaxaca al Gusto" that are way beyond the means of even the most dedicated home cook. Afterall, how many people are really going to make wasp nest sauce or salsa for flying ants? While most people will never make these recipes, they are nevertheless fascinating to read about. In addition, Diana Kennedy's extraordinary photos bring an additional level of understanding.

While there are plenty of exotic recipes, they are also easily a couple of hundred recipes that can be attacked by any serious home cook with a little imagination. As the Mexican immigrant population has grown and moved throughout the United States, ingredients that ten years ago seemed exotic and impossible to find can now be found at number of neighborhood food stores. It may take a little work to find these ingredients but end result will yield a greater understanding of the diversity of Mexican food.

Diana Kennedy has spent the last forty five years wandering around Mexico's backroads in search of interesting recipes. She is the foremost expert on Mexican food in the world and "Oaxaca al Gusto" is truly her opus magnus. This book is not for the casual cook looking for recipes for Thursday Taco night. "Oaxaca al Gusto" is the culmination of Diana Kennedy's life's work. One can only pray that Diana Kennedy has it in her to produce one or two more classic books like this one. The highest recommendation.

Diana Kennedy's classic The Cuisines of Mexico was among the first cookbooks I bought. We lived in rural Maine in the late 80s, and I have fond memories of getting chiles and spices mail-order (long before the Internet) so I could make her recipes. We introduced our spice-shy Maine friends to pork chops in adobo, and to turkey in mole poblano, and to fresh corn with cream, chiles, and cheese. The cookbook falls open to these recipes, 25 years later. Many pages have the food stains that are any cookbook's badges of honor. So you can imagine my fondness for everything Diana Kennedy does.

Oaxaca al Gusto is also wonderful -- but in a different way.

Some cookbooks are instruction books: What To Make For Dinner. Other cookbooks are coffee-table books, and an avid foodie is more likely to read them than to use them for inspiration for Tuesday-night supper. That's perfectly fine. I love a good "picture book" that entertains and educates me. But set your expectations accordingly. If you're considering this book for "Oh boy! Recipes for dinner!" you might be a little disappointed. You'll love the book, I assure you, but it's more fascinating than ready-to-use.

Kennedy always put a lot of energy into teaching us how to cook Mexican food in an authentic way, telling us about avocado leaves and epazote when they were beyond exotic. (In Phoenix today I still need to make a special trip to the Mexican grocery to find these.) Many of her earlier recipes were tempered with realism; that is, she knew that many of us couldn't get those ingredients, so she made adjustments or suggested alternatives (including, occasionally: really, don't make this unless you can get the right stuff).

In Oaxaca al Gusto, Kennedy pulls out all the stops. This is an exhaustive examination of the cuisine of a single region, and fulfills its role as described in the subtitle: an infinite gastronomy. She explains how cooks in Oaxaca make these dishes, without trying to "modernize" the recipes or make them "accessible" to us in North America. Sometimes it's a matter of ingredients (such as a recipe for turtle eggs in broth, or the very small mussels called tichindas, or one that uses a wasp nest); other times it's about the recipe's scope or appeal (barbecued beef head). She admirably documents regional variations and ingredients ("Every household has an achiote bush nearby. When the fruit is ripe, the abrasive brown husks are broken open and the red seeds removed [see photo page 143] and saved for future use"); she shares wonderful stories, such as "The Christening Present," a turkey cooked and given to a new baby's godparents ("The ingredients... amounted to about 60 dollars, which must represent an enormous sacrifice to the family who normally lives on less than a minimum income in this bare, scrubby countryside").

As a work of "Everything an educated foodie might ever want to know about regional cooking," this is a masterpiece. Especially so when considered with its gorgeous photography: everything from the raw ingredients to the cooked dishes. This is a visually stunning book, making it an ideal gift for any foodie whose loved ones think, "What could I possibly buy her? She owns everything already."

Which is not to say that none of these recipes made me say, "Yum! Let's make this!" -- among them the black Oaxacan mole (I'm still a fool for any mole...), savory rice (yet another "chicken with rice," this one with a whole head of garlic and a bit of cinnamon), or the barbecued beef (with three kinds of chile). It's just that this book is not primarily about what to have for dinner tonight... or even for a blow-out weekend dinner.

That doesn't keep this from being a 5-star book. It's simply amazing -- as long as you know what you're getting. Get this book to read, please, or at least to look at the photos (swoon!). But for cooking an authentic dinner on Sunday afternoon based on what you can buy at your nearby grocery... not so much.

I have every one of Diana Kennedy's, and was looking forward to this, esp. after it was given the James Beard "Cookbook of The Year" award. As it turned out, I was disappointed, the number one reason being the lack of an index! All it has is a table of contents, which is usually in the front of a book, in the back, where the index should be. I really like it when a book is well indexed, so if I have a particular ingredient I want to find recipes for, they will be easy to find. No way of doing this in this book. Also, while it is very authentic, as are all of her books, this may be so to a fault, as there are many ingredients that most people will simply have no access to, unless they are growing it (fortunately, I grow hoja santa, and a few other odd ingredients!). And many times a particular chile is called for, with no substitution suggested, yet most people will have no clue as to what it is, unless it is mentioned somewhere else in the book (that index problem again), or they have been to Mexico! I liked all the info on the different regions, but I will not be using this book much for recipes.

I just got this tonight, so I haven't tried to make anything yet, but so far it looks great. I was surprised to see the other reviews. There seem to be quite a few non-meat recipes. She offers substitutes for items not easily found. For the turtle egg soup, she listed turtle or hens eggs and gave the quantities for each. Most meats are easily substitutable and if that's not possible you can skip to one of the other 400 recipes. Items like the wasp-nest sauce were not recipes, but seemed like a description of something she once saw made in Oaxaca. It's definitely not an easy, 30-minute cookbook, so if that's what you're looking for this is not it.

I have some cookbooks that I flop open and use in the kitchen and some where I write the recipe on pad of paper and use that while cooking and save that for the next time I want to make that dish. It's quick and easy and save my nice cookbooks from getting ruined.

I ordered this book because it came highly recommended by other trustworthy and passionate reader-cooks on a book discussion forum. And it lived up to its praise. The book is nothing less than gorgeous, a superb rendition of what a coffee table cookbook can be while staying entirely practical. The photographs are stunning and beautifully reproduced. The recipes are laid out in logical order, and the accompanying text, thankfully talks less about the author's experience ("I tasted this while sitting in a shaded grove with my husband, my children, and my dogs, a perfect vintage in our hands, and views out over the green valley where we were lucky enough to find a run-down but ultimately charming farmhouse that we ...") than about the history and people of the region. She obviously cares deeply about the food, but its context is no less important.

Only one caveat: Diana Kennedy talks about and shares recipes for the REAL food of the region. Black iguana? Beef offal? Pork head? I realize that this is a poor country (comparatively speaking), but if you realize, as I did, that certain things, things that are routine for people who make do with every part of an animal, are never going to be part of your diet, then Diana Kennedy's books--Oaxaca al Gusto among them--may not be for you. I like authentic cuisine, but I guess I just need my versions to be slightly Americanized. For those who don't, this book is excellent. As beautiful to show as to cook from, it is a joy to behold and to taste. Just be sure of your own limits or those of your recipient.

I have just read this book through for the first time and know that I will have many years of pleasure from it, and will cook with it despite its weight and so on. Diana Kennedy has written many books covering both staples and more specialist corners of regional Mexican cuisine. This book os something really special and i am pleased that she has combined her own photographs and her humane but scholarly and collaborative approach with a determined focus on the incredibly rich food culture of the Oaxaca region.
This is not the right introduction to Mexican cooking, or even to Diana Kennedy for some people, but they are well served elsewhere. This monumental book is a legacy to the creativity and subtlety of all the cooks she has worked with around Oaxaca to learn and pass on these treasured recipes. Very special.

Diana Kennedy has again created a book that informs us about the authentic culture of Mexico and it's food. The photography is beautiful. I especially appreciated the lush understanding she provided about the unique regional development and handling of different plant and animal resources that become delicious food! I love the Mexican culture and enjoyed this book as a window into Oaxaca.