OP: Mi Cocina vols I and II

Armando Scannone, 2001. Flexibound. Very Good Plus.

What Doreen Fernandez did for Philippine cuisine or what Nitza Villapol did for Cuban food, one might say Armando Scannone (1922–2021) did for Venezuelan cooking. Not only have each of these authors legitimized home cooking in their respective countries, they’ve served as documentarians of traditional dishes, which might have been otherwise lost to tides of globalization and evolving eating habits.

A civil engineer of Italian descent, but born and raised in Venezuela, Scannone developed his palate on the flavors of Caracas. Though not initially a cook himself, he eventually wanted to reproduce the dishes with which he was familiar, only to discover that home cooking was considered “common knowledge” and the recipes weren’t written down. Scannone took it upon himself to methodically and rigorously document what locals were making on a daily basis.

His first book, Mi Cocina (1982), known familiarly as the “red book,” was a massive seller and offered a sense of pride and national identity through food, which particularly resonated after political upheaval and growing international influences. A second volume, the “blue book,” focusing more on the contemporary eating habits of Caraqueños in the ‘90s, followed in 1994. We are offering here both of those initial books in later printings.

Our copies are unused and Near Fine, flexibound and sturdy. In Spanish only.