Oaxaca Al Gusto by Diana Kennedy

Diana Kennedy has been writing about regional Mexican cooking for literally decades, and she started way ahead of the pack.  This book on Oaxacan cooking, which came out relatively recently, is a gorgeous book, something that you would be proud to have on your coffee table.  The opening chapter informs you that the triumvirate of Oaxacan cooking is chocolate, corn, and chilis.  When I was in Oaxaca, a Zapotec woman told me that a Oaxacan woman mut be able to make chocolate, tortillas, and moles, or she would be considered unmarriagable.  She told me this as she was grinding cocoa beans by hand to make the particularly granular chocolate that Mexico and three of the seven Oaxacan moles are famous for.

The book then goes on to delineate the dishes of the sub-regions of Oaxaca.  It is very detail oriented in that way, but that also makes it somewhat unusable as a home cook.  There are so many ingredients that are unobtainable for the average home cook as to make the book potentially frustrating if you bought it to cook from.  On the other hand, if you bought it to look at, to learn from, and to remember Oaxacan cuisine by, it is a perfect match.  The photographs are works of art.  They remind you of the foods that you ate in Oaxaca and the places that you ate them.  The picture of native cooks are priceless--the regional dress in Oaxaca is unlike many places (Guatemala being an exception), and as you page through the book, you can figure out where in the region you are reading about by the way the people are dressed.  So definitely buy it if you are looking for something to put on your coffee table, and look to the early cookbooks by Rick Bayless, or Susanna  Trilling's cookbook if you are hoping to replicate Oaxacan cuisine at home.