The Latin American Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Authentic Recipes [Hardcover]

Elisabeth Luard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003

From the award-winning author of The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking, made into a 13-part series for the BBC, comes Elisabeth Luard's collection of authentic Latin American recipes that span Mexico in the north to the southern tip of Argentina. Based on 84 key ingredients, the book includes old favorites and little-known regional specialties. Each recipe showcases a specific ingredient and demonstrates its versatility. Cocoa, for example, flavors sweet Brazilian Brownies and savory Mexican Chicken Mole. Lime adds zest to Guacamole and is the key ingredient of Shrimp Ceviche. 300 vibrant photographs of both the dishes and the locations where they originated create a sense of place and tantalize the palate in this definitive guide to some of the world's most enduring culinary traditions.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

All cooking depends on ingredients, their quality, and the cook's skill in handling them. Knowledge of ingredients and what makes a cuisine unique are fundamental to a cook's success. Luard demystifies Latin American cooking for everyone by addressing each fruit, vegetable, meat, fish, spice, and grain individually. Recipes accompanying each ingredient show its most typical uses. Luard covers the full range of Latin American cooking, not limiting her research to Mexican or Brazilian cuisines. For those whose curiosity extends beyond the item's comestible functions, Luard provides medicinal uses as appropriate. Full-color illustrations help cooks identify these foods in the market. Luard's expertise comes in particularly handy to help cooks distinguish different beans, or to make sense of the dozens of varieties of potato that now routinely appear outside their native Peru. Bakers may find Luard's recipe for fragrantly spiced almond-lard cookies especially attractive. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A continent famed for its colour, feistiness and general happy-go-lucky population also has one of the tastiest, but oft ignored, multinational cuisines in the world. An eclectic mix of Spanish, Portuguese, American and Caribbean, the dishes reflect each country's best traits. Chillis, tamarillos, mangoes, bananas, cassava, prickly pears: mixed with fish, meat or on their own, they are transformed into colourful, feisty dishes guaranteed to warm the heart. Celebrated cookery writer, Elisabeth Luard, was brought up in South America and Spain and came to know the minds and methods of Spanish cooks. She offers an informative insight into the ingredients accompanied by anecdotes and advice on where and how to buy these exotic items. Beautifully illustrated, the colour photographs of Francine Lawrence emphasise the colour and joy of this vast Latin American continent and offer a visual feast of the recipes to be discovered within. - Lucy Watson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Laurel Glen Publishing (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571459537
• ISBN-13: 978-1571459534
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,525,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Learning Resource, April 22, 2008

By 

Erin (Heredia, Costa Rica) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Latin American Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with over 200 Authentic Recipes (Paperback)

I am an avid cook, but after moving to Costa Rica, I was presented with new ingredients that I didn't know what to do with. Though willing to try my gringo favorites, my Costa Rican boyfriend was used to a different diet and "comfort foods" that I had never even heard of. I wanted to adjust to my new life and environment, and learning to cook traditional Costa Rican & Latin American foods was a key part of the process.

My suegra (boyfriend's mother) gifted me this book for Christmas, after I had fawned and drooled over it at one of my favorite bookstores. It has been an incredible resource for me, detailing each ingredient with incredible detail, explaining how it is used throughout South America.

One of my favorite details is that Laurd tells readers the names of each ingredient in different countries, which if you're familiar with Latin American Spanish, can vary greatly. After each one of her detailed descriptions, Laurd provides two or three typical recipes that include the ingredient, giving new L.A. cooks a good beginning typical foods arsenal.

If you're new to Latin American cooking, I can't recommend this book highly enough. However, keep in mind that it's more of a learning tool than a recipe book.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's OK, December 31, 2008

By 

R. Peckham "Robertp" (Staunton, VA.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Latin American Kitchen: A Book of Essential Ingredients with Over 200 Authentic Recipes (Hardcover)

I was not really impressed with the recipes in the book. I have eaten allot of Latin food over the years and this book didn't do anything for me. But that my opinion too.