The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them

For a limited time we have bookplates signed by Karla Vasquez!

This collection of recipes from Salvadoran cooks documents and celebrates cooking from the Central American country, as well as in expatriate families in the US for whom food is an anchor.

Author Karla Tatiana Vasquez came to the US from El Salvador as an infant, her family fleeing a 12-year civil war. Her account of everyday and holiday dishes is enriched with inspiring, sometimes poignant stories of many women similarly displaced, who built new lives for themselves and their families.

With books on specifically Salvadoran food very scarce, Vasquez takes pains to distinguish the country’s cooking from other nearby lands, highlighting preferred beans, the thickness and size of Salvadoran tortillas, and regional differences within the country., exemplifying her belief that documentation is power.

Among the many dishes documented here:

• Gallo en chicha, rooster cooked in a fermented pineapple beverage

• Pupusas de frijol con queso, a version of El Salvador’s national dish of filled griddles tortillas, this one containing beans and cheese

• Atol chuco, a fermented dish of black corn, black beans, and squash

• Neugados de yuca, a fritter made with yuca and fresh cheese, soaked in a cane-sugar syrup

Revealing and inspiring.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.