Food and Drink
Stirring the Pot
In her Michoacan kitchen, Diana Kennedy—the Julia Child of mexican cooking—serves up squash-blossom tacos and strong opinions.
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These days Kennedy travels frequently, gathering recipes, teaching classes, and visiting friends, but her house in San Pancho is her spiritual base. Set atop a low hill in the eastern part of the state of Michoacán, the breezy structure is most notable for the huge boulder—almost the size of a Volkswagen beetle—that has pride of place on the open main level. From around it sprout assorted stairways that lead up and down, right and left to the house's half dozen or so rooms and attached greenhouse. (Anyone else who was 65 and holding, with or without a bum knee, would curse the multilevel arrangement, but Kennedy relishes it. "The exercise is good for me!" she declares, trotting upstairs to check e-mail on her laptop computer.)
Because of her passionate views on the environment—"Man's heavy foot on this earth is destroying it!" she fumes at one point—Kennedy was at pains to make her house as energy-efficient as possible. Thus, she said no to air conditioning and heating even though temperatures here reach the nineties in the hot months and occasionally dip into the thirties in the winter. She also said no to outside sources of water. A spring above the village provides drinking water, while gutters around her roof collect rainwater in a massive cistern for bathing and other household uses. Not a drop is wasted: Water from the house is filtered and recycled to flush the toilets.
Not every conservation plan has worked quite as well as the one for water, however. In particular, a scheme to cook using "bio-gas" extracted from manure was a spectacular flop. "The cows didn't shit enough," she says tersely. And the house's natural setting has created some problems of its own. When I ask if the canopy and curtains around her bed are mosquito netting, Kennedy says, "Not exactly. We have snakes on the roof that eat the rats, and I don't want one falling on me in the middle of the night." But aside from manure-deficient cows and the risk of falling snakes, she's rather enjoyed the challenges of her casa ecológica. "I guess I've always been a bit of a hippie," she says.
If the kitchen is the nerve center of Quinta Diana, the open, high-ceilinged living room—with its view of red roof tiles and green branches—is a quiet retreat. On a table between two tall bookcases sits a group of framed photographs, including several of Diana with her late husband, journalist Paul P. Kennedy. "Paul was the first person I saw in the lobby of the hotel I was checking into in Port-au-Prince, in 1957," she says. "I was there on vacation; he was covering a story for the New York Times. I intended to stay two days; I ended up staying a week." Instead of returning permanently to her native England, as she had intended, she moved to Mexico City, where Paul was the Times bureau chief. A year later they were married. In the pictures, Paul and Diana look like two people on the verge of a great adventure. "He was sexy, like Spencer Tracy," she says, "same build, same looks." She fell in love with him and soon found herself in love with Mexico too. In short order, she was exploring the country in search of local crafts, learning the language, and eating native food in humble restaurants and taquerías. "Immediately the Mexican cooking bug bit me," she says. She and Paul entertained frequently, and among those who were impressed with her skills was New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne. Presciently, he urged her to write a cookbook. After Paul died in New York City of cancer, in 1967, she stayed there for a time teaching cooking classes out of her apartment. A publishing contract followed, and in 1972 The Cuisines of Mexico opened the eyes of English speakers to the mysterious and exotic cuisine of her adopted country.
The next morning, I have to leave to return to Austin. Kennedy is accompanying me as far as Mexico City, where she is visiting friends. She calls to say she will be early. Why am I not surprised? Precisely at 10:15 she and her regular taxi driver, Señor Monteagudo, appear. Kennedy is smartly attired in custom-made Italian suede slacks, a soft leather jacket, and as always, not a dab of makeup. Stowed in the trunk is a basket of avocados, passion fruit, and fresh eggs from her house.
On the way, she's her normal chatty, opinionated self. I ask how work is going on her next project, a Oaxaca cookbook ("Quite well. I've been to the most incredible places"). It will be published first in Spanish; since having been translated in the mid-nineties, her books have become quite popular in Mexico. I also get her take on several leading chefs and authors working with Mexican food. Predictably, she has no patience with Young Turks who invent without bothering to master the basic techniques and tastes of Mexico's complex regional cooking styles. "Within the cuisine, there are such fabulous variations that you don't need to innovate," she grumbles, a traditionalist to the core. When the talk turns to her house, she surprises me by admitting that she sometimes longs for a smaller, more manageable place. And she wouldn't mind just a bit more "luxury" (and, perhaps, no snakes on the roof?). She also thinks about ultimately making her house and land a biopreserve, which would be a fitting future for them.
As we near her destination, in an area unfamiliar to our driver, she shifts into high gear, directing every turn: "A la izquierda aquí, ¡sí, aquí!" ("Left here, yes, here!"). For some reason, I flash back to the cooking classes I took from her so long ago. At her destination, we unload her belongings and wait until her knock on the door is answered. The taxi backs out and the last I see of her is a petite figure briskly gathering up her basket of eggs and produce. The cab merges into traffic, and Señor Monteagudo remarks, to no one in particular, "Ah, la señora Diana, la única" ("Señora Diana, the one and only").
That pretty much says it all.
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