Gloria and Emilio Estefan created a beautiful cookbook of authentic Cuban recipes that I have been trying to get my hands on since it came out last year. I finally found one in the Barnes & Noble in Franklin and had an opportunity to look through it. The verdict: It really is a beautiful book. The design is clean and appealing, and the photos of the food are saliva-inducing. The recipes don’t offer any innovations in Cuban cuisine, but that wasn’t their aim. Their aim was, as the subtitle states, to share authentic Cuban recipes, which is what I really like about it. They know you shouldn’t mess with a good thing. The book offers a pretty comprehensive list of all the great, traditional Cuban dishes which are all prefaced with a little info on the history of the dish and a little personal bit about their relationship with it. (For example, their daughter apparently loves papas rellenas. Who knew??????) I was also pleased to see that they make their flan like I do, with three milks–not the straight-up regular leche crap that I see a lot of other recipes using. It’s a nice book, but since I already have a book that has authentic Cuban recipes (Nitza Villapol’s old school Cocina Criolla, mo-fos!) I probably won’t buy this one myself. Everyone, my birthday is Aug 10! You can give it to me on a different holiday though…Cinco de Mayo is next week…
Culinary Grammar 