Reddit mentions of The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados: A Cookbook

I learned a lot about Mexican cuisine from The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados: A Cookbook by Diana Kennedy. I picked it up for a dollar at a yard sale nearly 20 years ago and I'm still happy I grabbed it. I go back to it often.

The recipes and methods are very clear, she tells stories on the history of a dish and the whole thing feels really authentic. I've had plenty of Mexican cuisine cookbooks over the years, this is the only one I still have.

Well you could add to their cooking knowledge by getting them a book about real mexican cuisine:

Truly Mexican


Tacos, Tortas y Tamales.


The Art of Mexican Cooking

This post was inspired by the Fresh Homemade Mozzarella post from /u/tamale_uk.

My recipe came from Diana Kennedy's Art of Mexican Cooking. Here is a blog that sources the same recipe.

A few notes:

• I didn't have access to raw milk (in fact, this milk was discarded by the grocery store and 100% free!), so I added 1/4 cup of kefir instead of the recommended yogurt.
  
• Diana Kennedy's recipe didn't mention precisely how much rennet to use, so I referenced a pamphlet I got from a cheesemaking class, which suggested 1/4 tablet dissolved in 1/4 cup water, for every gallon of milk. After the appropriate time for the rennet to do its work, it hadn't become super firm, so I went ahead and started cutting the curds. As a result, the curd I pulled out was a lot smaller than I expected, which resulted in a smaller yield than the recipe suggested.
  
• Because of the lower curd yield, the 2 1/2 tsp. salt ended up being too much. So this cheese is a bit too-salty, though no less delicious in small amounts.
  
• I didn't have a proper cheese mold, so I poked some holes in a 4.5", 1 cup, plastic shallow takeout container, which was perfectly sized for the amount of curd.
  
• Due to the small curds and low yield, I knew there was still plenty of milk solids in the whey. So I added 2 tbsp of vinegar to the whey, brought it to temperature and let it simmer on medium-low for 1 hour. I then poured the whey through a cheese cloth (butter muslin to be exact), and yielded 2.5 cups of requesón cheese (Mexican ricotta, same thing really).

Pick a classic in a cuisine with which you're generally unfamiliar but for which you feel confidant you can get good ingredients. A few ideas:

• Diana Kennedy - Essential Cuisines of Mexico or The Art of Mexican Cooking
  
  
• Barbara Tropp - The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking
  
  
• David Thompson - Thai Food
  
  
• Claudia Roden - The New Book of Middle Eastern Food
  
  
• Shizuo Tsuji - Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
  
  You'll be forced to learn new techniques and deal with new ingredients, and get a sense of an entire cooking tradition. Any of those books will give you at least a small sense of the culture that inspired the cuisine, the human context, in addition to culinary knowledge.

I own this cookbook and love everything I've prepared out of it. Written by a gringa but it's meant to be still pretty authentic.

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Mexican-Cooking-Diana-Kennedy/dp/0307383253

If you are looking for basic cooking information the Joy of Cooking is obligatory.

A couple things I've learned along the way is first to start slow and work through cookbooks. It's easy to keep buying book after book but they are just decoration if you don't know them well. Secondly, be wary of books with lots of pretty pictures! In my experience they are full of single-purpose recipes that don't teach you the true nature or source as you spoke of above.

As far as source recipes I'd second everything mentioned so far but if you are looking to blow people away with Italian and Mexican dishes (my particular favorite styles)... look no further than:

The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan - Possibly my favorite author of cookbooks of all time. This is definitely the one to start with in my opinion.

The Art of Mexican Cooking - Diana Kennedy - If you are looking for real mexican food this book is a great place to start.

Bonus Book... not a cookbook but a great way to learn about cooking