'Cookstrips – Mexican Cooking' (1970s) by Len Deighton

Len Deighton’s 'Cookstrips – Mexican Cooking' is a curious artifact of culinary and cultural history. Known for his hard-boiled espionage thrillers, Deighton also played a pivotal role in mid-20th century food education—particularly for the British public, who at the time were only beginning to engage with food beyond the Anglo-French tradition. With Mexican Cooking, Deighton set his pen to a cuisine rich in history, complexity, and regional variance—yet one that was virtually unknown to the average British reader in the 1960s and 70s.

This strip-based guide doesn’t aim for scholarly or ethnographic depth. Instead, it acts as a pragmatic and playful primer on a few core dishes: chili con carne (an Americanized staple, admittedly), tortillas, guacamole, frijoles (refried beans), and some pepper-forward sauces. Deighton’s aim was never authenticity in the modern sense—but accessibility. These are not “Mexican” dishes in the way a chef from Oaxaca might define them, but rather approximations tailored for mid-century Britain with its limited pantry and narrow palate.

Yet Deighton is never careless. He respects the food. His Cookstrips often include small, telling details: toasting spices before grinding, adjusting chili levels based on heat preference, or soaking beans properly rather than relying on canned ones. These touches suggest not just surface-level curiosity but a craftsman’s interest in method. The layout—hand-drawn panels with clear step-by-step sequencing—suits the earthy, process-oriented nature of Mexican home cooking. You don’t read these strips like a recipe; you follow them like a circuit diagram. It’s engineering meets gastronomy, and it works.

What makes Cookstrips – Mexican Cooking stand out in Deighton’s culinary series is its contrast between visual austerity and the layered richness of the cuisine itself. While his black-and-white illustrations are tight and clinical, the food traditions they hint at are vibrant, spiritual, and regionally idiosyncratic. This gap—between the reductionist style of the strips and the deep-rooted identity of Mexican food—isn’t a failure. It’s a tension that reveals something about the times.

Deighton’s readership likely had no access to tomatillos, epazote, or masa harina. So he offered what was feasible: ground beef, tomato paste, mild chilies, maybe a splash of Worcestershire sauce (which snuck its way into more than a few 70s “international” recipes). It was Mexican food through the prism of postwar British kitchens—optimistic, imaginative, and just beginning to open up to the world.

If there’s a limitation to the Mexican Cooking Cookstrips, it’s that they present a cuisine known for its depth and diversity in only broad strokes. You won’t find any moles, huitlacoche, or mention of pre-Columbian food traditions here. But that’s not really the point. These strips weren’t intended as culinary anthropology. They were working blueprints—practical, friendly, and revolutionary in their own right.

In today’s world of high-resolution cooking videos and global ingredient delivery, Cookstrips – Mexican Cooking may seem quaint. But in their time, they offered something rare: an invitation to taste a foreign culture not as a tourist, but as a cook in your own kitchen.

Conclusion:
Deighton’s Mexican Cooking Cookstrips are not definitive nor comprehensive, but they are foundational. They represent a gateway moment—when Mexican food first arrived (however loosely interpreted) on British kitchen counters. More importantly, they capture Deighton’s enduring ethos: that food, like fiction, is best experienced not through lectures, but through doing—and preferably with a bit of style.