Cookbooks from faraway places

In high school, I studied Latin. In college, I studied Latin, spurred on to semester after semester by one very adorable professor, whose name I've long since forgotten, though I do remember that he had long hair, and he taught his Latin classes in bare feet.

My parents and teachers advised me to learn French or Spanish. "Latin is a dead language," they warned. How was I to know that the ability to find a museum (or a rest room) in Latin America would be more important in the long term than the ability to translate the writings of Catullus?

Turns out they were right. Latin is a dead language, and I can prove it.

Not one single cookbook of the hundreds in my personal collection is written in Latin.

I have books in Hungarian, Turkish, Thai, Malay, Polish, Vietnamese, Italian — collected on my travels and brought back for me by traveling friends — and books in English from many Spanish-speaking countries I've visited, including Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico. One of my favorite travel souvenirs is a cookbook in English, published in the country I'm visiting. These books are difficult or impossible to buy outside the country, but often they represent the most authentic recipes and cooking techniques, and give invaluable insight into the home cooking of their culture.

Barbara, from the World Cuisines Cooking Group, recently returned from a visit to Buenos Aires with a book for my library. How Argentina Cooks, by Alberto Vazquez Prego, was published by Editorial El Ateneo in 2005. Apart from the fabulous empanadas on the cover, there's not a photograph in the book. It's part historical record, part teaching bible. I wish I knew how to read it in the original Spanish, because some of the translations are a bit confusing, and others are, frankly, amusing.

Here's my favorite bit from a section of the introduction called Advertencia (translated as "Forewarning", which, as you'll see, it most definitely is):

Culinary art thrives whenever freedom is given to personal touch as well as to inspired innovations. Modifications will always be at the core of renewal. Provided of course that, as in the case of a regional recipe book like this one, those lapses of genial creativity are duly channeled and trimmed so that the end result does not stand widely apart from what custom has declared as correctly proportioned.

Argentine cooking is by choice restrained in the use of the many spices and diverse condiments. Only those mentioned throughout this book are current, so that in order to keep the flavoring quality as set by local preferences use only those indicated, making allowances for personal taste which will always modify somewhat the indicated amounts by increasing, diminishing or omitting seasonings. In all cases proportions should be kept as indicated if the aim is to reproduce faithfully the ways of the Argentine kitchen. If not, then may your choice be an inspired one.

Forewarning: Improvise at your own risk!

We'll definitely sample some recipes from this cookbook during the coming year. I'm already working on a possible menu for the World Cuisines group. Noodle and garlic soup, asado (beef cooked over a fire), one or two types of chimichurri, and stuffed zapallitos (zucchini). The book starts with soup and ends with half a dozen recipes for yerba mate, a tea brewed from the dried, ground leaves of the Ilex paraguayensis (Paraguayan holly tree). We might have a wee bit of trouble finding the holly leaves at our local supermarket, though the tea is available online, so perhaps we'll just drink strong herbal tea instead.

I can't imagine we'll follow the recipes to the letter — that's not the Ninecooks way — but we'll have lots of fun breaking the rules.

Comments

[Pauline]

OK I've read the article twice and I'm still not sure what we are doing. I'll just hang in there and see what materializes.

[lydia]

That's how I feel when I'm reading this cookbook – not quite sure how the recipes should taste, but willing to hang in there. Noodle soup, grilled beef, zukes and some sauces – that's the menu I'm working on. Not for September, because the group expressed interest in African cooking, but for a future cooking session. Hang in there!

[Angeline]

I visited Argentina 15 years ago and my two major food memories are MEAT and MEAT. Actually it was amazing - lots and lots of wonderful fire roasted goat, beef, and lamb. Plus some wonderful wines and great music. I know a lot less about food then, but the whole culture (art, food, buildings, people, etc.) seemed like a fantastic blend of the Latin and the European.

[Lydia]

Bev, from the Wednesday Lunch Group, just brought me a cookbook this week from Peru. If Argentinian food is meat and meat, Peruvian cooking is potatoes and potatoes. I'm looking forward to exploring the chimichurri variations, which were always so wonderful at the Argentinian grill restaurant we used to frequent in Cambridge.