ORTIZ, Elisabeth Lambert 1915-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born June 17, 1915, in Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, England; died October 27, 2003, in New York, NY. Journalist, gourmet, and author. Ortiz was an authority on Latin-American and Caribbean cooking who published several highly respected books on the subject. The daughter of a salvage engineer, she moved with her family to Jamaica when she was only eight years old and would spend the majority of her life living outside her native England. After some years, the family moved again to Australia, and it was here that Ortiz began her career as a journalist, working as a court reporter for a Sydney newspaper. Later, she also wrote theater and film criticism and pursued her interest in poetry by publishing her verses. Her first book was a verse play titled Storm's Abatement (1949). After losing her pilot husband to World War II, she moved to London and then to New York City, where she worked as a writer for the United Nations and met Mexican diplomat Cesar Ortiz Tinoco. Sharing a love of literature and good cooking, they were married, and it was Tinoco who introduced Ortiz to Mexican cooking and encouraged her to write articles about Mexican cuisine. Moving to Mexico City, Ortiz learned the Spanish-language and collected food recipes while shopping at the local markets. A friend of hers who was an editor for New York House and Garden helped Ortiz publish her recipes and articles, and this eventually led to her first cookbook, The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking (1967), most recently revised as The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking (2000). She went on to write about Caribbean cuisine in such books as The Complete Book of Caribbean Cooking (1973) and Caribbean Cookery (1977). When her husband was assigned to work in Bangkok, Thailand, Ortiz moved with him; this led to an interest in Asian cooking and the book The Complete Book of Japanese Cooking (1976). After her husband's retirement in 1980, the couple moved to London, and when he passed away in 1992, she moved to New York City, where her sister lived. Ortiz continued to write and publish almost to the end of her life, releasing the cooking and food books Exotic Fruits and Vegetables (1983), The Food of Spain and Portugal: The Complete Iberian Cuisine (1989), and A Taste of Latin America: Recipes and Stories (1998). She was also the author of The Sleeping House Party (1951), a juvenile book titled The Living Sea (1965), the poetry collection The Seasons (1967), and a memoir of her childhood in Jamaica, Father Couldn't Juggle (1954).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Telegraph (London, England), December 6, 2003.

Independent (London, England), November 25, 2003, p. 18.

Times (London, England), November 25, 2003, p. 30.