Trip Advice: The 5 best cookbooks for planning a delicious trip to Oaxaca, México
- Lisa K. Wirth
- Jul 14, 2024
- 6 min read
Better than any travel guide book—in trip planning and research, cookbooks and culinary memoirs have helped us make the most of our time on the road. Here is a list of five of our favorite culinary books to help you prepare for your visit to Oaxaca... they're sure to stoke your appetite for what's to come!
We have found it to be true—we travel first with our eyes and our stomachs.
Maybe I agree so strongly, because as a kid I'd hide away in the library stacks and read cookbooks for hours, poring over their pages like they were dramatic novels. I'd not yet had an opportunity to travel internationally, but there in splattered and dog-eared pages, I developed a taste for exploring new cultures through the lens of food. In those moments of culinary daydreaming, a love of "traveling by the plate" was sparked.
What I sensed then and know now—it's in the cocina that culture can begin to be known and explored. And Oaxaca and it's UNESCO-recognized gastronomic traditions are a delicious destination to put this idea into form. It's why our Oaxaca Makes Me Happy 9-day tour includes two hands-on cooking classes with Cocina Tradicional (local traditional cooks), and plentiful visits to the mercados, farmers, makers, molinos, and mezcaleros, who make execution of these recipes possible. In tasting Oaxaca, we begin to know it.
If like us, you're passionate about gastronomy and the role of food in meaning-making and cultural identity, then you're likely to agree—travel books often fall short. They might touch on where to dine (a list immediately dated the moment the edition is published), or list names of a handful of specialties, but they lack imagery, ingredients, depth, and context.
These five English-language culinary books offer the perfect authentic and knowledgeable counterpoint — sparking our appetite for the trip to come and shaping our ability to taste the culture once we're there.
The Local: Chef Ruiz is the co-owner of several Oaxacan restaurants, including Casa Oaxaca. Born in a rural town in the Zaachila region outside of Oaxaca de Juárez, he's dedicated his culinary career to his home state, promoting Oaxacan cuisine and the special connections that exist between its land, heritage, and food.
Both memoir and cookbook, its organized between the chef's origins in the Central Valley, the coast (where Ruiz began his cooking career), and Oaxaca City, where he's made his mark. You'll find: Sumptuous photos, accompanied by personal stories and time-tested recipes.
Takeaway: Ruiz' Glossary of ingredients is the perfect shopping list to take with you to the mercado, as well as to help you develop an understanding of the typical flavors and ingredients of the region. We consider it the perfect checklist to reference, and use it as a shopping list to stock our pantry against!
The Enthusiasts: What started as a Kickstarter book project (which I was thrilled to be an early funder on!) is now available at bookstores and directly from the publisher. It's a delightful collection centered around Dia de los Muertos—its foods, rituals, crafts, and traditions.
Penned by a husband and wife team, the idea for the book came from a blog post the authors made on the Muertos holiday. The result is a beautiful culinary journey that's educational, inspiring, and quite simply—delicious.
Takeaway: From a step-by-step guide to making nixmatal (prepared corn for masa) to instructions for making ofrendas (altars) at home, this book is the next best thing to being in Oaxaca and understanding all the ways Mexican culture celebrates the living and the dead. The sections dedicated to Sourcing Ingredients is up to date and exceptionally helpful for the U.S. based cook who's not able to shop Oaxaca mercados (markets).
The Storytellers: Now in its second printing, and for the first time in hardcover (in the English language edition), this beautiful photo book is not a cookbook, but an in-depth photographic chronicle of the vast richness of Mexican gastronomic traditions—notably 87 of Oaxaca's different traditionally handmade drinks and the people who make them.
The project is the result of a collaboration between photographer Salvador Cueva and food historian and critic Ricardo Bonilla. Organized into the eight regions of Oaxaca, the book features drinks made from fruits, seeds, rinds, leafs, sap, flowers, crusts, and stems—prepared raw, roasted, cooked, fermented, distilled, boiled, ground, mixed by mortar and pestle, foamed, cold and hot. These are beverages the Oaxacan people have developed to take advantage of and transform natural resources into drinks that nourish the body, quench thirst, heal illnesses, feed the spirit, and connect with higher energies.
Takeaway: This beautiful coffee table tome brings aspects of Oaxacan cultural history to life. As diverse as the drinks are, so too are the stories of the beverage makers profiled. While it's impossible to taste every one of the beverages profiled in a single visit to Oaxaca, it certainly provides us with a bucket list to keep us coming back... and an appreciation for the labor of love behind every recipe.
The Historian: Called by many the Julia Child of Mexican cooking, Diane Kennedy was an indefatigable student of Mexican foodways for more than 50 years. Her uncompromising insistence on using the proper local ingredients and preparation techniques has taught generations of English-speaking cooks how to prepare—and savor—the delicious, subtle, and varied tastes of México.
In this James Beard Foundation award-winning cookbook: Kennedy details her many years traveling the length and breadth of Oaxaca, capturing in words and photographs some 300 recipes.
Recipes for what she describes as:
These little-known foods, both wild and cultivated, the way they were prepared, and the part they play in the daily or festive life of the communities I visited.
A special feature of the book is a chapter devoted to the three pillars of the Oaxacan regional cuisines—chocolate, corn, and chiles.
Takeaway: This book is the culmination of Diana Kennedy's life's work. Organized by regions, Oaxaca al Gusto presents some recipes—most from traditional (home) cooks—for classic Oaxacan dishes. Kennedy accompanies each with engrossing notes about the recipe's place in family and communal life.
When I say that Oaxaca has redefined my whole understanding of Mexico, I am speaking as both a Mexican person and a trained Mexican cook. My mind and heart have been deeply enriched by my contacts with this unique culture.
La Jefecita: Mexican chef Zarela Martínez is one of America’s top culinary professionals. An inductee into the James Beard Foundation Who’s Who of Food and Beverage, she grew up in Chihuahua on a cattle ranch, where she learned to cook from her mother. Bilingual and bicultural, Martínez opened her eponymous restaurant Zarela in New York City in the 1980s. The restaurant has been credited with introducing diverse regional Mexican cuisine to American diners on a national level. You might have heard Martínez, with her son, celebrity chef, Aaron Sanchez, on the podcast they co-host: Cooking in Mexican from A to Z on the Heritage Radio Network.
Author of numerous cookbooks, Martínez' collection of Oaxacan recipes (published in 1997) is especially unique. Over twelve years of travel across Oaxaca, she cooked alongside traditional Oaxaqueña Cocinera Tradicional (traditional women cooks), and she shares recipes learned, with stories and descriptions that add immense flavor and context.
Takeaway: While the book's Mail Order and Shopping Sources are outdated, Martínez' celebration of the rituals and traditions, and the women behind them, are timeless. The book's Bibliography section offers a terrific jumping off point for further research. You can't go wrong with this heartfelt travelogue from an experienced chef who understands how women's hands are intrexibly linked to Mexico's gastronomic heart and soul. The book is out of print, but used copies are worth seeking out!
What books on Oaxaca have you found helpful? Which dishes or ingredients are you most excited by? Tell us more in the comment section. We'd love to hear from you!
In the examples of books available via Amazon: Your purchase helps support our programs. If you choose to purchase using the links provided, as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
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