The Book of Latin American Cooking

Rating:
Summary: Great variety of South American Recipes
Review: I spent my childhood in Colombia and greatly miss some of the "Criollo" cooking of the region. This is one of the few Latin American cookbooks that includes many recipes from South America, along with the more common Central and North American (Mexican) recipes. She has an extensive introduction describing the cooking of different regions and a chapter on ingredients. There are many recipes in different categories, but I believe in a book this size it was impossible to do justice to the cooking of some of the countries represented. Think of it more as an introduction to the cuisine of those countries. I found that there were only two Bolivian recipes listed, and there were very few Argentinian, Paraguayan, Peruvian or Venezuelan recipes. The book does include the Argentinian dishes with which I am most familiar. I wish she would visit the region again and write another book! I have found this book useful in recreating some of the recipes from my Childhood. Some of the recipes I looked up seemed complex and had ingredients that I could not locate, but most of the recipes seem easy to prepare, and adapted to ingredients that can be found in the US. The Colombian recipes included are representative of the two regions that she states she visited, the Coastal Region, and the area surrounding the Capital, Santafe de Bogota (However, my Aunts would be mortified to hear of an "Ajiaco Bogotano" made without Guascas and with just any kind of potato instead of with "papas criollas"). There are not a lot of recipes from the Colombian interior and Mountain regions where I spent most of my childhood, or from the region bordering Venezuela. This is understandable in a cookbook that covers so many diverse cuisines. I will be purchasing some more specialized cookbooks on Colombian cooking. One that I like and I would recommend, is "Cocina Colombiana, Paso a Paso". It is currently out of print, but if Colombian Cooking interests you, you may be able to find a used copy. I am also looking for books on Argentinian and Peruvian Cooking. Any suggestions? Since I own this book in a paperback version that is just starting to fall apart, I will be purchasing it in hardback.

Rating:
Summary: Great Cookbook to add to your library...
Review: Lots of wonderful authentic latin recipies. They have all been very intersting and delightful so far. Some of the dishes can be a little complicated to prepare though.

Rating:
Summary: Accuate and practical
Review: Several other Latin American cookbooks have recommended this cookbook and I found this book very good in terms of the recipes.

However, I found it very frustrating to use as I am a modern, young European who has no knowledge about 'cups'. The units of cooking in this book are totally in American and there is no translation at the start to assist in converting to grammes or mililitres or to notify people about the differences between American and UK pints.

Thankfully, I am a qualified chef so I was able to translate the differences but it made it a hard book to use.

As stated above the actual recipes are very good. If only it were more user-friendly.

Rating:
Summary: Great variety of South American Recipes
Review: The cooking of Latin American is extremely diverse. Argentina is a large pastoral country and meals are meat based. The Argentines use a range of sauces many highly flavored to complement mea dishes and barbecues. When I have been to Argentina one is struck by how restaurants have huge displays of cooking meat in their windows and vegetables are hard to find.

Mexico on the other hand is a country which has a tradition of subsistence based Agriculture. The cuisine is based on the use of corn meal made into a range of breads such that are then flavored by vegetables cheese and smaller amounts of meat.

Other Latin American Countries have similarly divergent cuisine's. Rather than have the book broken up into the food from various regions the authors use a conventional structure of breaking up the book into soups, salads meat dishes and the like. Each country will then contribute various dishes.

The preparation and flavour types used in the cooking are exotic and outside the tradition of English and American Cooking. That makes the recipes interesting to try and experiment with. All of the recipes are easy to follow and make. The degree of preparation for each dish is also much less complex than say Indian or South East Asian Cooking so that it is a simple book to use.

Worth a look.

Rating:
Summary: My most delapidated cookbook
Review: _The Book of Latin American Cooking_ is one of my favorite cookbooks. It's full of unique ideas and combinations that you just can't find elsewhere. For example, I was surprised to see how much a pureed corn sauce tasted like it contained dairy.
I would never have thought of making a soup with pureed avocados! A lot of the recipes sound odd but are delicious. A few, admittedly, are just odd.

I was having a look here to see if there might be a hardback edition. My current copy needs to be replaced!