Diana Kennedy

Tamale Trivia: 10 Fascinating Facts

Last week, we told you about 10 spots for terrific Mexican tamales in L.A., from King Taco to Rivera. What we didn't say is that the tamale is so versatile that hundreds of varieties exist within Mexico alone, not counting nouveau creations with ingredients like foie gras and truffles. Turn the page ... More >>

Diana Kennedy at LACMA: Oaxacan Foods, Book Signing Proper Tortillas

Diana Kennedy, the Mexican cuisine authority and cookbook author, doesn't often travel outside of Mexico, where she lives in rural Michoacán a few hours from Mexico City. For the past 65 years, Mexico has been her home, and a laboratory for her studies and writings about Mexico's regional cuisines. ... More >>

Diana Kennedy Holds Book Signing at LACMA

Have you checked out Diana Kennedy's 2010 cookbook Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy? Because if you have, and you really should, you'll notice it feels a little more academic than most cookbooks: It was commissioned by a governor of Oaxaca in order to catalog the state's regional cuisine. Oax ... More >>

Q & A with Gustavo Arellano: Taco USA, Mexican Authenticity Food Writing

You might suspect Gustavo Arellano, the brain and wit behind the popular syndicated and OC Weekly column ¡Ask a Mexican!, as one of those Mexican food sticklers who bristles at ideas of yellow nacho cheese, the chimichonga, the chicken fajita pita, enchilada combination plates and Taco Bell's 50th ... More >>

Coming This Summer: Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in The Company of Cats

Anticipation in the nonfiction food book world depends on your taste in dining companions, past and present: Julia Child, Yottam Ottolenghi, Diana Kennedy, perhaps. And this summer, it will also depend on how you feel about cats. Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in The Company of Cats by Patricia ... More >>

Short Attention Span Dinner Theater: Your Week in Food, 4/2 - 4/6

In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad. "Does Los Angeles boast the best sushi in the entire country? If even Ferran Adriá is on our side, we can probably feel confident it's true." 10 Best Sushi Restaurants in Los Angeles. "Anticipation in the nonfiction food boo ... More >>

Cookbook Of The Week: Memories of Philippine Kitchens For Your Weekend Pig's Blood Stew

If you don't happen to have any of your own Memories of Philippine Kitchens -- banana hearts in coconut milk, chicken tinola, hot salabat -- Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan's cookbook by that name will soon be re-released with updated content (the book includes a history of Filipino foods) and recipes. ... More >>

Food News Roundup: On the Phone with Diana Kennedy, Typewriters How Organic Can Feed the World

C. LeVassera stack of Diana Kennedy books​The Cookbook Blog: A very cool interview with Diana Kennedy. LA Observed: Ray Bradbury's typewriter, a 1947 Royal KMM #3756210. (Does this have anything to do with food? No. But it's Ray Bradbury's typewriter. Stop clouding pictures of foie with your ... More >>

Cookbook Of The Week: Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco, Now That's A Cookbook

There are a handful of cookbook authors -- Diana Kennedy (hyper local Mexican cuisine), Maida Heatter (home baking), Paula Wolfert (Moroccan cuisine) -- whose personal obsession not only with cooking, but truly with a culinary culture, is so focused, so resolute, that when they finally release anoth ... More >>

Cookbook Review: Bite by Bite Is All About The Party

​We've never fully understood the need for cookbooks dedicated solely to miniature versions of foods, like Peter Callahan's soon-to-be-released Bite by Bite: 100 Stylish Little Plates You Can Make For Any Party. Then again, we're not big city caterers (Callahan's namesake catering company is ... More >>

Cookbook Review: Heavy Metal Mosh Potatoes An Alice Cooper-Worthy Snack Recipe

​There are those cookbooks -- an awful lot of them in recent Food Network years, it seems -- that you pick up and immediately set back down. Then you scout for something of substance to pick up by, say, Diana Kennedy or Harold McGee, to pretend that momentary Rachel Ray EVOO moment never happe ... More >>

2011 James Beard Media Award Winners

​It's a case of local boy makes good -- make that two local boys -- at this year's James Beard Awards. Our own Jonathan Gold won the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award while Patrick Kuh of Los Angeles magazine won the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award. In the first ever ... More >>

Best Cookbooks of 2010 That Double As Cultural History Studies: Cook Learn

Luis Manuel GuaidaDiana Kennedy Has So Many Things To Teach You About Oaxacan Cooking​For those who complain there is simply no time to do it all, that these days you must choose between cooking and reading (in that precious weeknight window of time between your last Tweet and lights out), thi ... More >>

Cookbook Review: Can This Skinny Bitch Cook, Or Is She Just One Smart Marketing Bitch Reviewer's Remorse

​Two new cookbooks, Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook by Kim Barnouin and Glutton For Pleasure: Signature Recipes, Epic Stories and Surreal Etiquette by Bob Blumer, pretty much sum up our lovely city. Or at least the made-for-television version that the rest of the country just loves to ... More >>

The Thursday Edition: A Roundup of Newspaper Food Stories

SapphireBlue22stack of newspapers​What's the country reading today food-wise? Here's a roundup of some of the food-related stories from other newspapers, many of which print their food sections mid-week. And remember, even if you don't actually buy papers these days (or not; this paper is free ... More >>

Last Night at Loteria Grill: An Evening of Oaxacan Food with Diana Kennedy

N. GalutenStuffed jalapeños​ Diana Kennedy, the highly-esteemed cookbook author and Mexican cuisine authority, was at Loteria Grill in Hollywood last night for a special event to promote her latest (and supposedly last) cookbook, Oaxaca al Gusto. The event, costing $100, included two drinks, ... More >>

Your LudoBites 6.0 Visual Aid: An Opening Night Slideshow

Colin Young-Wolffthe crew of LudoBites 6.0​ If you weren't at Loteria Grill stalking Diana Kennedy last night, or pitching a tent waiting for Obama at today's Boxer rally, or in a sports pub watching the Lincecum-Halladay game, or at home in the rain actually cooking your own dinner, you were ... More >>

Q & A With Mary Sue Milliken: Adventures In the Alaskan Surfing Capital, Chasing Boar in Mongolia Her Hitchcock Squab Experiment

Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger have been culinary fixtures in this town for decades, from their first restaurant, City Cafe, which opened in 1981, to their downtown flagship Ciudad, to the Westside's Border Grill to, inevitably, a food truck of the same name. Oh, and let's not forget the five c ... More >>

Diana Kennedy Book Party at Loteria Grill: Bring a Wheelie

​Jimmy Shaw, chef-owner of Loteria Grill (three and counting), has long had a special place in his heart and in his kitchen for Diana Kennedy, the highly respected authority on Mexican cuisine and author of a long string of classic cookbooks on the subject. When Shaw was first getting into the ... More >>

Diana Kennedy's New Oaxaca al Gusto Cookook: Yes, You Want It

​Diana Kennedy. Those two words mean esquite expert to some, proper tamale-making instructor to others, or as so many have dubbed her, simply the "Julia Child of Mexican cuisine." That last one is the only title that the pedigreed author of the new cookbook Oaxaca al Gusto doesn't deserve, as ... More >>

Milliken & Feniger Update: Ciudad Closing, Border Grill Opening

CiudadCiudad dining room​After twelve years, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger are closing their downtown restaurant Ciudad. But don't worry, the doors won't be shut for long: the chefs will be reopening the restaurant in October as a Border Grill. Their other Border Grill, more a casual can ... More >>

Welcome to the Season of Esquites: Mexican Grilled Corn

D. GonzalezGrilled corn at Yxta Cocina Mexicana​In the lingo of street food, the horn equals corn: tamales, mayo corn, and increasingly, esquites.  Although you might be familiar with the first two, now is the ideal time to get acquainted with roasted richness of the esquite. In her recently ... More >>

Dr. Eliot's 5-Foot Shelf: Diana Kennedy's "The Art of Mexican Cooking"

Amazon.comThe Art of Mexican Cooking​When Charles Eliot, the former Harvard president, declared that one could get a perfectly serviceable education by spending 15 minutes a day reading from the books that could fit on a five-foot shelf, he did not have cookbooks in mind. But these days, with ... More >>

Dr. Eliot's 5-Foot Shelf: Were The Harvard Prof a Cook, That Is

Photo credit: Amy ScattergoodThis is not a product endorsement In 1909 publisher P. F. Collier and Son published a 51-volume anthology of classic literature, compiled by then Harvard president Dr. Charles W. Eliot. It came to be known as the Harvard Classics, but when it was published, the anth ... More >>

Praise Cheeses: Jimmy Shaw's Loteria Grill Spices Up Hollywood

The latest of L.A.'s hip Mexican restaurants, where the food is as good as the scene

Winning Ticket: Guilty Pleasures of Loteria Grill's Chicharron de Queso

¡Ask a Mexican! Pretension Headache