Seasons Of My Heart: A Culinary Journey Through Oaxaca

Nation's Restaurant News, April 3, 2000 by Michael Schrader

MEXICO, Susana Trilling, 369 pages, New York: Ballantine Books, $25.

More interest is being shown in the food of this southeastern Mexican state.

Trilling fell under Oaxaca's spell decades ago, and although born and raised in the United States, she now makes her home near Oaxaca City, where she has a cooking school, Seasons of My Heart.

This illustrated cookbook, her second, is an interesting celebration of the food and culture of the seven regions of Oaxaca: the Central Valleys, the Canada, the coastal region, the Mixteca, the Sierra, the Tuxtepec and the isthmus. She takes us on a tour into the mountains, the villages, the markets and plantations, introducing us to many people along the way.

The cookbook contains 200 recipes, many of which are fine indeed. Examples are seafood soup, Mexican bread pudding and thin-rolled tamales in banana leaves.