MEXICO CITY — Diana Kennedy, a sharp-witted British food writer devoted to Mexican cuisine, died Sunday. She was 99 years old.
Kennedy spent much of her life learning and preserving the traditional cuisine and ingredients of her adopted home, a mission that even in her 80s had her driving hundreds of miles around her adopted country in a rumbling truck as she searched remote villages for elusive recipes. .
Her nearly dozen cookbooks, including “Oaxaca al Gusto,” which won the 2011 James Beard Award for Chef of the Year, reflect a lifetime of groundbreaking culinary contributions and her efforts to collect vanishing culinary traditions, a mission that began long before the rest of the culinary world gave up. gave Mexican cuisine the respect it felt it owed.
Her longtime friend Concepción Guadalupe Garza Rodríguez said Kennedy died peacefully shortly before dawn Sunday at her home in Zitacuaro, about 100 miles west of Mexico City.
“Mexico is very grateful to her,” said Garza Rodríguez. Kennedy had lunch at a local hotel on March 3 for her birthday, but for the past five weeks she has mostly stayed in her room. Garza Rodríguez visited Kennedy last week and said she cried when they parted ways.
Mexico’s Ministry of Culture announced via Twitter on Sunday that Kennedy’s “life was dedicated to discovering, collecting and preserving the riches of Mexican cuisine.”
Like few others, Diana realized that preserving nature is key to continuing to obtain ingredients that enable the creation of delicious dishes that characterize our cuisine, the Ministry said.
Desde @CencalliCultura we leave Diana Kennedy, whose life was dedicated to discovering, compiling and preserving the riches of Mexican cuisine. Eligió Zitácuaro para construir su finca, la Quinta Diana, ejemplo de sustentabilidad y conservación de la naturaleza y la biodiversity. pic.twitter.com/O9dotc4h44
Her first cookbook, “The Cuisines of Mexico,” was written during long hours with local chefs throughout Mexico. It established Kennedy as the foremost authority on traditional Mexican cuisine and remains the seminal work on the subject even four decades later.
She described it as a gastronomy that humbled her and credited those – usually women – who shared their recipes with her.
“Cooking teaches you that you’re not always in control,” she said. “Cooking is the greatest reward in life. Ingredients can deceive you.”
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She received the equivalent of a knighthood in Mexico with the Congressional Order of the Aztec Eagle for documenting and preserving regional Mexican cuisine. The United Kingdom also honored her by awarding her a Member of the British Empire for the advancement of cultural relations with Mexico.
Kennedy was born with an instinctive curiosity and love for food. She grew up in the UK eating what she called “good food, whole food”, if not a lot of food.
During World War II, she was assigned to the Women’s Wood Corps, where food was simple and sometimes meager—homemade bread, fresh cream, cookies and berries on good days, nettle soup or green beans with butter when rations were thin.
Millions across Western Europe shared this simple food, but for Kennedy, these dishes awakened an appreciation for taste and texture that would last a lifetime.
She talked about her first mango – “I ate it in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, standing in the clear, blue warm sea, all that sweet, sweet juice” – the way some people talk about their first crush.
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 stationed.
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Here, a succession of Mexican maids, as well as the aunts, mothers and grandmothers of her new friends, gave Diana Kennedy her first lessons in Mexican cooking—grinding corn for tamales, cooking rabbit in adobo. It was another culinary awakening. While her husband wrote about rebellions and revolutions, Kennedy wandered a country that was “new, exciting and exotic” to her, tasting unique fruits, vegetables and herbs from various regions.
The couple moved to New York in 1966 when Paul Kennedy was dying of cancer.
Two years later, at the urging of New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne, she taught her first Mexican cooking class, searching the Northeast for ingredients to reproduce the fiery flavors of Mexico. She soon spent more time in Mexico, establishing a sanctuary there that still serves as her home in the country.
In classes, cookbooks and lectures, her basic principle is simple: “There is never, ever, an excuse for bad food.”
She was known for her tongue-in-cheek commentary, though her pioneering work helped turn Mexico into a culinary mecca for gourmets and the world’s top chefs, and transformed a cuisine long dismissed as tortillas smothered in heavy sauces, cheeses and sour cream.
She once told Jose Andres, the James Beard-winning chef and owner of an acclaimed Mexican restaurant, that his tamales were “damn awful.”
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She worried that celebrity chefs, who had flocked to Mexico in recent years to study and experiment with the purity of flora, fauna and flavors, were mixing the wrong ingredients.
“A lot of them use it as a novelty and they don’t know the things that go together,” she said. “If you’re going to play with ingredients, exotic ingredients, you have to know how to handle them.”
Kennedy was tight-lipped and cautious about who she let into her sustainable Mexican hideout near the town of Zitacuaro in the embattled western state of Michoacan.
No one was welcome unannounced. Cell phones were turned off and computers were kept in the writing studio. Her companions were her paid help, a staff who treated her like a dear friend, and several beloved – if somewhat fierce – dogs.
Growing in Kennedy’s vast and enchanting garden, remnants—and resurrections—of an ancient culture climbed the stone walls. She worked hard to prevent the loss of local ingredients, creating a mobile farm of native herbs and other produce. Cultivation continued in the vine-filled atrium at the center of her home, a sultry culinary paradise of vanilla, oregano, mint, bananas and countless local herbs.
“Rebellious activist, absolute defender of the environment, Diana Kennedy was and continues to be the best example of concern for the environment and its biological diversity,” wrote her editor Ana Luisa Anza in Sunday’s remembrance. She wrote that many years ago, Kennedy set turning 100 as her goal to complete her life’s work.
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In 2019, the documentary “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy” showed a still-spirited Kennedy enjoying the produce of her garden and driving the bumpy roads of Zitacuaro.
In her later years, Kennedy said she wanted to slow down but couldn’t.
“There are so many more recipes, handed down from mother to daughter, that will be lost. There are seeds, herbs and roots that could disappear. There is absolutely so much more to be done!” she said.
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Contributed by Martha Mendoza, Associated Press
