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| Gran Cocina Latina | |
|---|---|
| Name | Gran Cocina Latina |
| Author | Maricel E. Presilla |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Latin American cuisine |
| Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
| Pub date | 2012 |
| Pages | 496 |
| Isbn | 9780393089235 |
Gran Cocina Latina
Gran Cocina Latina is a comprehensive cookbook and culinary history volume published in 2012 by W. W. Norton & Company and authored by Maricel E. Presilla. The work surveys the ingredients, techniques, and regional dishes of Latin America, tracing culinary lineages that connect indigenous traditions, Iberian colonization, African diasporic influences, and transatlantic trade networks. It positions cuisine as a lens on social history, migration, and cultural exchange across countries such as Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.
Gran Cocina Latina combines cookbook format with scholarly apparatus, presenting recipes alongside essays on provenance, ingredient histories, and culinary terminology. Maricel E. Presilla, a chef, historian, and restaurateur associated with Havana-inspired dining in New Jersey and institutions such as the James Beard Foundation, frames dishes within broader historiographies involving figures and events like Christopher Columbus, the Spanish Empire, and the Atlantic slave trade. The book situates staple crops — including maize, cassava, potato, bean, peanut, and chili pepper varieties — in relation to colonial botanical exchanges such as the Columbian Exchange and commercial circuits involving ports like Seville, Lisbon, Cadiz, Valparaiso, and Callao.
The volume is organized geographically and thematically, with sections devoted to major regions and culinary ecosystems: Mesoamerica, the Andean highlands, the Amazon basin, the Southern Cone, the Caribbean, and Central America. Each regional chapter combines historical essays, ingredient glossaries, technique demonstrations, and recipes for dishes including mole poblano, ceviche, feijoada, asado, arepas, ropa vieja, and ajiaco. Presilla integrates discussions of heritage crops such as amaranthe and quinoa with practical notes on sourcing items like annatto, achiote, aji amarillo, hog plum, and plantain.
Gran Cocina Latina includes cross-referenced sections on preservation methods, street food, festive foods, and beverages such as chicha morada, mate, horchata, tinto de verano, and canelazo. Photographic plates and line drawings accompany recipes; the appendix treats pantry essentials and measurements alongside bibliographic recommendations referencing archival collections, ethnobotanical studies, and historical cookery manuscripts from archives in Madrid, Lima, and Havana.
Presilla frames Latin American cuisines as syncretic outcomes shaped by indigenous civilizations—such as the Aztec Empire, the Inca Empire, and the Maya civilization—and by subsequent encounters with the Spanish Empire, Portuguese Empire, and African societies transported via the Middle Passage. The book highlights culinary hybridity in urban centers like Mexico City, Lima, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, and Bogota; it analyzes how gastronomic identity was negotiated in diasporic nodes such as Miami, New York City, and Madrid.
Gran Cocina Latina underscores the role of agricultural revolutions and trade infrastructures—railways, steamships, and telegraph lines—in shaping national dishes associated with events like the Pan-American Exposition and festivals such as Carnival. It situates street vendors, market economies, and peasant foodways within cultural institutions including national museums and culinary academies, while connecting to movements championed by chefs and scholars like Gabriela Cámara, Gastón Acurio, and Alex Atala.
On publication, Gran Cocina Latina received critical acclaim from culinary critics, food historians, and institutions including the James Beard Foundation and prominent periodicals. Reviews praised its scholarship, breadth, and practical recipes, comparing its scope to landmark works by authors associated with the rise of regional cookbooks in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Some commentators linked the book to debates involving culinary nationalism and authenticity as debated in journals and forums connected to Oxford University Press and university departments in Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley.
Criticism centered on questions of representation and editorial choice: some scholars argued the book privileges certain elite culinary traditions and urban dishes over rural and indigenous variants documented by ethnographers associated with institutions like the Smithsonian Institution and University of Chicago. Others noted challenges in ingredient accessibility for readers outside the Americas and in balancing academic exposition with recipe simplicity, drawing parallels with controversies surrounding globalizing menus promoted by celebrity chefs featured in outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian.
Gran Cocina Latina has influenced chefs, cookbook authors, culinary programs, and museum exhibitions focused on Latin American foodways. Culinary practitioners in restaurants from San Francisco to Buenos Aires and from Barcelona to Sao Paulo have cited Presilla’s research in menu development and ingredient sourcing. The book contributed to curricular materials at culinary schools affiliated with institutions like the Culinary Institute of America and informed exhibitions at cultural centers including the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Its legacy extends into scholarship: Gran Cocina Latina is frequently cited in academic articles on food history, ethnobotany, and migration studies, alongside works featured in bibliographies from presses such as Cambridge University Press and Routledge. The volume helped catalyze renewed interest in heirloom crops, market preservation projects in cities like Cusco and Quito, and in the documentation of family recipes preserved by diasporic communities in Los Angeles and Miami.
Category:Cookbooks Category:Latin American cuisine Category:2012 books