People from around the world have found a home in Texas, bringing with them a multiethnic feast replete with dishes that originated in Mexico, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In these pages you'll discover a magical place called Cuisine, Texas, where you can find all these favorite family recipes in one handy source.

Noted food writer Joanne Smith spent several years gathering the traditional recipes of every major ethnic group in Texas. As a result, Cuisine, Texas is a virtual encyclopedia of Texas cooking, with more than 375 recipes drawn from Native American, Spanish, Japanese, French, Cajun, Mexican, Tex-Mex, Anglo-American, African American, Thai, Czech, Swiss, Dutch, Jewish, Greek, German, Polish, Italian, British, Lebanese, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, and Scandinavian cooking.

The recipes cover the full range of foods, from appetizers to entrees, salads, vegetables, breads, and desserts, and all have clear, simple-to-follow instructions. Interspersed among them are engaging discussions of the different ethnic cuisines, flavored with delightful stories of some of the cooks who created or perfected the recipes. And to make your cooking even easier, Joanne Smith includes information on how to readily find imported and specialized ingredients and a word about health-conscious substitutions.

Cuisine, Texas, may not exist on the map, but it can be found everywhere that people enjoy good food and the fellowship that goes with it. Let this book be your one-stop source for all the tastes of Texas.

Featuring new and revised recipes, photos, and bêtes noires, this culminating book of an illustrious career presents the favorite dishes and personal stories of the world’s foremost authority on traditional Mexican cooking and one of its most-celebrated food writers

Diana Kennedy is the world’s preeminent authority on authentic Mexican cooking and one of its best-known food writers. Renowned for her uncompromising insistence on using the correct local ingredients and preparation techniques, she has taught generations of cooks how to prepare traditional dishes from the villages of Mexico, and in doing so, has documented and helped preserve the country’s amazingly diverse and rich foodways. Kennedy’s own meals for guests are often Mexican, but she also indulges herself and close friends with the nostalgic foods in Nothing Fancy.

This acclaimed cookbook—now expanded with new and revised recipes, additional commentary, photos, and reminiscences—reveals Kennedy’s passion for simpler, soul-satisfying food, from the favorite dishes of her British childhood (including a technique for making clotted cream that actually works) to rare recipes from Ukraine, Norway, France, and other outposts. In her inimitable style, Kennedy discusses her addictions—everything from good butter, cream, and lard to cold-smoked salmon, Seville orange marmalade, black truffle shavings, escamoles (ant eggs), and proper croissants—as well as her bêtes noires—kosher salt, nonfat dairy products, cassia “cinnamon,” botoxed turkeys, and nonstick pans and baking sprays, among them. And look out for the ire she unleashes on “cookbookese,” genetically modified foods, plastic, and unecological kitchen practices! The culminating work of an illustrious career, Nothing Fancy is an irreplaceable opportunity to spend time in the kitchen with Diana Kennedy, listening to the stories she has collected and making the food she has loved over a long lifetime of cooking.