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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of your Thanksgiving day with us. Whether you're listening to the radio while basing your Turkey, live streaming while you mash those potatoes, or on-demand as you question whether to have that second piece of pie, I'm grateful you are here and thankful for your continued support.

On the show today, sticking with the Thanksgiving theme, we'll speak with the authors of some of our favorite cookbooks from this year, like Chef JJ Johnson, about his cookbook dedicated to rice, as well as the head chef of Sofreh, the Persian restaurant in Brooklyn, and who can forget dessert with Vermont based pastry chef, Gesine Bullock-Prado, but first, let's get this started with the many dishes and culinary traditions of Latin America.

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Alison Stewart: A cookbook from food writer Sandra Gutierrez is an encyclopedic look at the many dishes and culinary traditions of South America. The book is called Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America. It's almost 600 pages and is separated in sections by key ingredients like beans, yuca, and corn. Of course, there's also recipes like arepas de pollo from Venezuela, tarta de coco from Belize, and sopa seca from Peru.

Sandra writes in the book's introduction, "Eating through Latin America is akin to tasting world history. Every cuisine is a result of the melding of cultures, an ode to globalization on every plate." You will hear callers throughout this conversation, but this is an encore presentation, so we aren't taking calls today. I began by asking Sandra Gutierrez about how she defines Latin America for the purpose of this cookbook.

Sandra Gutierrez: I define it as the 21 countries that compose Mesoamerica, or Mexico and Central America, South America, and the Latin Caribbean. That is how I describe it. That is how I do it for the purpose of the book and for the purpose of Latin Americans who self-describe as Latin Americans. There are other countries in the Caribbean that do not have people who describe themselves as Latin Americans but rather as Caribbeans or Afro-Caribbeans, and so I'm very respectful of that.

Alison Stewart: I want to go back to that idea of the melding of cultures. How did Latin American cuisine become a microcosm and a blend of the world's cuisines?

Sandra Gutierrez: That's a fascinating question. It starts really with the colonization of America by the Iberian countries, or Spain and Portugal, way back in the 1400s. It goes on to going through different immigration growth again at the end of the 19th century. At the same time that America was going through their large immigration change through Ellis Island, Latin America was getting world cultures arriving to the Americas to what we call the New American continent, to build what-- they called it to build the Americas, because a lot of these countries had been devastated by disease and by ingested, and so the indigenous people of the Americas, a lot of them, millions and millions and millions had deceased.

Therefore the newly independent countries, independent from the reigns of Spain and Portugal, were looking at building their popular again, and also encouraging people to come and, what they called, build the Americas. They needed people to defend it. Each country even their neighboring countries, newly independent countries, were very fragile back then. We get a lot of influence from all over the world in Latin America, different points in history. It is actually fascinating to see how different groups of people arrived or settled in bigger numbers than in some places rather than other places, and how that influenced the cuisine of a particular region, or country, or city.

Alison Stewart: We're going to talk about some of the differences, but I was curious what was unique about the culinary traditions of Latin America, and if there are any sort of connective, there are any connections between different countries.

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes. I think that the main vein that we have connecting us are the indigenous peoples. Even though they were different groups of people, they all shared the same native ingredients. The ingredients are basic to what unites us all as Latin Americans, which is why we divided the book in ingredients. I think that's the best way to look at how the cuisines were formed. At the base, indigenous people, and the indigenous native ingredients.

Then we have the Europeans. Again, I go back to the Iberians because there were the Spanish and the Portuguese who came first to the Americas and settled first and started colonizing. Then we have the vein of what I call the African vein, which were the enslaved workers who were brought forcefully to the Americas by the Iberians and the Europeans, and who actually had a tremendous influence in the way Latin American eats today.

Alison Stewart: You have this great description in the book where you write, "Latin American food is like a large house. The front door is Mexican food, however, step further into the house, and ah, there are 20 other kitchens inside." What do you mean?

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes. I think that for most people who are learning to cook or who aren't familiar with Latin American cuisine, they're mostly familiar with Mexican cooking. For the majority, I think, of us, we feel like we have all been boxed into this one cuisine. Although Mexican cuisine is one of the most incredible cuisines of the world, very, very rich, I would say akin to Chinese food with regional differences and just amazing, amazing techniques, the rest of Latin America is also exciting.

Each country has its own diverse cuisine from the other because the histories that formed each country, the groups of people and the cultures that melded together with the different indigenous groups in each place, created their own different amalgamations of flavors and of ingredients. They are completely different, but it doesn't mean that they're not as delicious as Mexican food. I say, come in through the familiar door first, your tacos, your enchiladas, your moles, and then take a smaller leap of faith. I'm not asking you to make a huge leap of faith, just start going a kitchen at a time, you're already inside the house.

Alison Stewart: Sandra, I'm going to ask you to say the name of the book to make sure I'm saying it correctly.

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes. The book is Latinísimo. Latinísimo means very, very Latin American.

Alison Stewart: Latinísimo home recipes.

Sandra Gutierrez: Latinísimo.

Alison Stewart: There we go. Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America. Let's talk to Victor, calling in from Staten Island. Hi, Victor.

Victor: Hi. Yes. Like I said, over in El Salvador and Guatemala and near Pacific, we had the Mayas. They made pupusas. Pupusas are called gorditas in Mexico, arepas in Colombia and Venezuela, but practically it's a corn, a pantry stuffed with either cheese, or beans, or both. It used to be made with the flours from the pumpkins, pumpkins cooked with onions, and then that was used up for stuffing for the pupusas.

We have another dish that I was explaining that my mother-in-law prepares the turkey. She prepared it so good that I had to marry my wife because she made it better than my mother. The way that we make the turkey, it's like a Mexican mole. We toast and grind all the spices, and then this gets mixed with tomato juice. When they put the Turkey in the oven, the bottom of the turkey is simmering on the sauce, and the top is being baked, and it's getting the brown color. We rotate the turkey, so it's all nice and even.

Alison Stewart: Oh, Victor, thank you so much for calling in. I think we got some lessons from Victor there.

Sandra Gutierrez: Actually, Victor, I think you'd be delighted to know that both of the recipes you're talking about are in the book indeed. The first ones are the pupusas from El Salvador that I stuff with loroco, but the book, although it has 357 official recipes, it has about 400 extra variations. I also explain how to make your bean, your cheese, or your chicharrón and pupusas, or what you call revueltas in El Salvador, which means mixed together.

Then the turkey that you're talking about is the pao el relajo, and the relajo means messy. There is a wonderful recipe in the book, very easy to recreate at home. That technique that you talk about, cooking the turkey or roasting with a liquid in the bottom and roasting it on the top, is a strictly Latin American way of what I call steam roasting. That's a special technique that we use, and it creates a very moist Turkey or pork or whatever it is that you're doing, and you don't have any trouble with having your dry turkey meat.

Alison Stewart: I won't say that you're kind enough to let us put your recipe for pupusa de queso y loroco on our website.

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes.

Alison Stewart: That is very exciting. We did not plant Victor as a call. That happened organically.

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Sandra Gutierrez: Love it.

Alison Stewart: One of the really great examples you use about how there is connective between the different countries but each one has its own individuality, is you write about how sofrito is a base, but it does differ. Like how Puerto Rican sofrito is different from Panamanian sofrito. What's an example of the difference?

Sandra Gutierrez: The basic sofrito was made with onions, garlic, and oil, and that comes from the word sofregit in the old Catalan language way into the 10th, 11th century. We're talking about that being the basic sofrito when the Spanish arrived to the Americas. Once they arrived, then they start combining cooks in both the native cooks, and the Spaniards, and Portuguese start combining the native ingredients of the Americas into their sofrito.

For instance, the Cuban sofrito will have an addition of tomatoes, peppers, not hot peppers but sweet peppers, typically, your green and red bell pepper, and they'll have lots of garlic, and they'll have achiote or annatto, which is a yellow food coloring that everybody in the world has had if they've ever had cheddar cheese or macaroni and cheese because it's what gives cheddar cheese its orange color because cheddar is naturally white.

As always, the world has been fascinating with gold, and golden foods have been popularized forever, which is the reason that Annatto, actually, became a very important ingredient in the rices through Latin America because the Spanish loved it. They, of course, couldn't bring the saffron, which was so, so expensive, it's still one of the most expensive spices in the world, and replaced it with Anatto. In Puerto Rico, when you go, you change it further.

If you remove the tomatoes and you add the long-leaf culantro, which is called recao in Puerto Rico, and that is a green, very, very grassy herb. I call it uber cilantro because it tastes even richer. That is what is mixed into the equation and it's a green sofrito. Just to give you two examples, one is red and vibrantly gold, an orangey color, and the other one is green. Those are just two examples of the many bases that you'll find.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Peter from Norwalk, Connecticut, who wants to share a recipe. Not your recipe, however, though, right, Peter?

Peter: Hi. I had a Mexican co-worker who found out that I was a coffee nerd. She shared with me her recipe for-- and I don't remember the name of it. Basically, it's four cups of water, two cinnamon sticks, and you boil the cinnamon sticks in the water for about five minutes. Then you add a third of a cup of coarsely ground coffee, simmer that for about five minutes, strain and serve, and it is so good.

Alison Stewart: Peter, thank you for calling in. Are you familiar with this, Sandra?

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes. It sounds to me like it's café de olla. It's just a very traditional way to have your coffee. It's the pot that makes the olla part. It's quite delicious, and I can see why you would become easily addicted to that.

Alison Stewart: You are listening to my conversation with Sandra Gutierrez, author of the cookbook, Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of South America. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest this hour is cookbook author and historian, Sandra Gutierrez. The name of her book is, let's see if I can do it, Sandra, Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America. We've got a text that just says "[foreign language]!" [laughs]

Sandra Gutierrez: Peruvian food is actually one of the most exciting, I think, that people try in Latin America. It's got an amalgamation of different cultures, a lot of Asian influence, Chinese, Japanese, which is called Nikkei in the Peruvian combination, and also, Hakka. Then you've got Middle Eastern influences, African influences, and of course, at the base of it all, Inca influences. It's a fantastic cuisine with an amalgamation that produces vibrant, refreshing, very exciting food.

Alison Stewart: Another text says, "Love Chino-Latino."

Sandra Gutierrez: There we go. The birth of Chino-Latino is actually Nikkei cuisine or Chino-Peruvian cuisine, but you will find it all over Latin America. Chino-Latino is one of the movements that resulted from the Chinese people settling in different areas of Latin America. There's a very strong Chino-Latino movement in Cuba. There's another one in Mexico, and you will find it all over the place.

I know that in Guatemala, in the Department of Jutiapa, which is at the eastern side, close to El Salvador, there's a very famous dish called chow mein. It is similar but not the same as the Chinese chow mein. It's a little bit more intricate in flavors. It also includes a little bit of Latin American chiles like serrano or jalapeño in it. It's usually less of a mixture of seafood and chicken, but it's done with very, very thin noodles. It's very reminiscent of the lo mein of China.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about one recipe because it's rated easy, not just because it's rated easy, it sounds delicious. If people are feeling a little bit like, "I don't know if I could do this. I'm feeling intimidated," this recipe is rated easy, pastelón de plátano maduro y carne, which is plantain and beef casserole, which sounds delicious. Where did this version come from?

Sandra Gutierrez: This came from a friend of mine from the Dominican Republic. The pastelón, the way I say it, the way I describe it is a sweeter version of a gluten-free lasagna because it's layers of mashed plantain that's not as sweet as to be used for dessert but it's still a little bit green. Then you layer that with a delicious picadillo recipe in the middle with just wonderful flavors of cumin and oregano and spices and some tomato sauce, and then cheese, and you keep on layering it just like a lasagna.

If you love lasagna, that is a very easy dish to try. You don't have to boil the lasagna sheets or layer them while worrying about them breaking. It also allows you to have a dish that you're familiar with, with a little bit of a twist.

Alison Stewart: At what point in the plantain life cycle-- what plantain should I be using? Should I be using green ones, should I be using very ripe ones?

Sandra Gutierrez: For the pastelón, you want to use them when they're already yellow with some brown spots. The plantains are fascinated because the greener they are, the more they behave like a starchy vegetable, and the riper they are, all the way to a black color, it becomes a fruit and it becomes sweet. It's got its different uses. I go through the explanation of that in the book because it really opens up the possibilities of what people can make with them.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Edson, calling in from Manhattan. Edson, thank you for calling in.

Edson: Oh, Alison, thank you. I really love this segment. I was [unintelligible 00:17:05] over there that I'm from Brazil, born and raised in Brazil. I don't know if your guests know about feijoada. It's the Brazilian-made dish. It's a stew made with black beans. It's a black bean stew. You add pork, a lot of pork over there, seasoning and pork. It's very, very popular in Brazil. Actually, it's a national dish. The dish was created by former slaves in Brazil. Actually, they were slaves. They used part of the meat that slave master didn't want it. They created this dish with pork and beans.

In Brazil, you also have the side dish that comes with the feijoada. It's called feijoada, F-E-I-J-O-A-D-A. The side dish with this is yuca flour and collard greens, a lot of collard greens, and also orange. If you go to a Brazilian restaurant, certainly, you're going to have that feijoada. Last, in Brazil, lasagna, the Italian, we do not eat with ground beef. In Brazil, we put a layer of the lasagna, and then ham and mozzarella cheese, and then the tomato sauce. You add layers, that, and then you put it in the oven, and then melt the cheese. It's delicious. It's Brazilian version of lasagna.

Alison Stewart: Edson, you're making me hungry. [laughs] Sandra, you were nodding vigorously during Edson's conversation.

Sandra Gutierrez: Edson, feijoada is one of my favorite dishes in the world. I included a homemade recipe by my neighbor, actually, who is from Brazil. It is a feijoada that you can actually prepare very easily during the week. It's what they have quickly during the week. The product that they use for that is a bacon. I know that the traditional feijoada has tail and pig's ears, and they use the whole whole gamut of meats from the pork in the feijoada. That's included in the book. You'll also be happy to know that I mentioned farofa, which is what you're talking about, also. When we talk about yuca, I did not include all of the recipes I would have wanted to include from each country.

I think that the recipes that you will find from Brazil will make you very proud of the cuisine of Brazil including the brigadeiro cake that's very popular for birthdays. Again, this is a book of home cooking recipes, so recipes that can be made easily at home that your contemporaries in Latin America are cooking today. You will find new variations of their traditional dishes that you can make easily for dinner every night.

Alison Stewart: I got a question for you. The text says, "Pernil, which Latin country makes the best version of it and why? What's the secret ingredient or method to get that flavor?"

Sandra Gutierrez: I don't answer that question because I'm getting trouble with grandmothers. The Dominican grandmother will get angry at the Cuban grandmother. I have a Cuban son-in-law. You get the Puerto Rican. I will say it depends who your grandmother is who makes the best one. There are very different ways of making it. I do have a recipe for a [unintelligible 00:20:30] pernil that you're able to do again during the week. You'll also find different recipes for mojos that are great to combine with pork. What else was part of that question?

Alison Stewart: What is a secret ingredient or a method to get the flavor?

Sandra Gutierrez: The flavor, to me, is very important that you have a lot of garlic. A lot, a lot of garlic. That is, I would say, a commonality between all of them. Then depending on what country you're in, the Cubans will use a mojo sauce, which I have a recipe for in the book, that uses Naranja agria or Seville orange, which you can actually make up by combining equal parts of orange juice and lemon juice, lots of garlic, olive oil and oregano and cumin.

It depends what country you're in, but you do want to have a lot of garlic in the base. Then you really want to make sure that you cook the beginning-- I think it was Victor who talked about the steam roasting method we were discussing. You want to be able to uncover the pernil at the end and really cook it on the top very well under direct, even a broiler, so that the skin will become crackling and delicious because that's the price of any good, serious pernil.

Alison Stewart: We've got a text from Carolina from Queens, and I'm going to read what the dish is, and then I think you will probably know the name of it. She says, "I crave this all the time. It's an Ecuadorian dish but without the meat, like in the old days. Just the cheese-filled potato pancake on a bed of lettuce with a fried egg on top, drizzled with salsa de mani peanut sauce and some cortido, red onions, tomatoes, and lime juice on the side."

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes, those are Llapingachos, and they're delicious. They're like-- think of Ecuadorian leches with a cake. They're with an attitude if you will. I love Llapingachos. I did not include a recipe in this book, but I do have one in my Latin American Street Food book. Again, this book, I wish I could have added all 9,000 recipes I originally had on the list, but it would have taken a barge to carry each book, and it's pretty big as it is. Yes, absolutely.

Look for the recipe in my other book, Latin American Street Food. I think you're going to love it. Super easy to make. The secret for making Llapingachos that don't disintegrate when you're cooking them is to put them in the refrigerator for a while after they've been stuffed with the cheese, and then fry them.

Alison Stewart: We have a listener who wanted to ask you about-- to talk about Carne mechada.

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes. Carne mechada, the recipe is in the book by a dear friend of mine. I used the Venezuelan recipe for carne mechada. Carne mechada is actually quite familiar throughout Latin America. It's one of those recipes we inherited from Spanish tradition, and it's really shredded beef, Carne mechada. The Cubans know it as ropa vieja, and the ingredients varies slightly from country to country. It'll be a country that adds wine to it. The Venezuelans add tomatoes and sweet peppers. The Cubans add olives and caper. It's something that's very comforting and very easy to make, again, and it is in the book.

Alison Stewart: There is a recipe. I want to talk about Arab-Latino. There's a recipe, Arroz con Fideos, which is a rice and a pilof. How did the Arab-Latino culinary movement give birth to this dish?

Sandra Gutierrez: The Arab culinary movement, it melts with Latino cookery at the moment that the Spaniards descend on Latin America because the Spaniards were just freeing themselves from the Ottoman Empire that they've been under for eight centuries. They had learned already a lot of the techniques and recipes from the Arabs and the Ottomans and brought it to the Americas. In this particular recipe, it is a pilaf, which is a Persian way of making rice where you first sauté the grains in some oil with some aromatics, and then you add the liquid. That helps the rice to become very fluffy but also stay separate.

In this case, it is cooked with fideos, which are vermicelli if you will, pieces of vermicelli noodles that are browned or turned golden before you mix them with the rice in very much the same manner that they still make it in Egypt and in Syria and in Lebanon. In different countries of the Middle East, you will still find the same dish. It is one that is very popular in Argentina, and the recipe is included in the book.

Alison Stewart: Someone has texted us, "One of the few recipes I make that is seasoned only by its main ingredients is chile verde, pork shoulder, onions, tomatillos, and a variety of charred and skinned green chilis, for example, poblano, Anaheim, jalapeño, stew together, that, and some salt. Family favorite, though every spice or herb I've tried adding only distracts." That's an interesting comment.

Sandra Gutierrez: That's a very interesting comment. Again, that goes to the fact that this listener learned to cook from someone. That is the recipe they recognize as their comfort food and their particular, authentic dish. I do include a recipe of chile verde. I could not write a book and not include it. That is one of the most popular and well-known home dishes from Mexico. I think you can vary the spices and the herbs that you use to make it different.

One of the beauties of home cooking is that food is very simple to make, so they don't require copious lists of ingredients. All of the ingredients are very easy to find. Most of us can find them in our neighborhood store or supermarket. There's no need for people to go look for ingredients in obscure places.

Alison Stewart: Someone has asked us how many variations of Spanish rice are in the book.

Sandra Gutierrez: Oh, my goodness, I stopped counting. There are many, many variations of Spanish rice. You've got your Arroz con Pollo, you've got your arroz with Patos, you've got your arroz with coconut, you've got all sorts of variations. The thing is that rice became probably the most popular grain that was brought into the Americas, with Mexicans eating the most rice per capita in the world. There are a lot, a lot of, dishes with Spanish influence in rice, but also a lot of them with African influence, because even though beans are native to the Americas, all of the beans, peas were not.

Black-eyed peas were eaten in Africa already in combination with rice. Once they crossed over to the Americas, you start seeing all of these bean and rice dishes like the Congris of Cuba, the gallo pinto, Nicaragua, or Costa Rica, depending on who you ask, and other such dishes like arroz con gandules, Puerto Rico. You start getting all of these combinations that are very much African-influenced. There's a lot of rice. There's a whole chapter on rice.

Alison Stewart: I do want to talk desserts before we wrap up.

Sandra Gutierrez: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Bolo de brigadeiro?

Sandra Gutierrez: Bolo de brigadeiro. That is a chocolate cake for the ages, really. It's a messy chocolate cake with a gooey topping, truly delicious. Brigadeiro's are the national candy of Brazil, and they look like miniature truffles. They're coated in little chocolate jammies or coconut, depending on what you're doing. I included in this book a recipe for the brigadeiro brancos, which are the white brigadeiro's from Brazil. They are super delicious. They're coated in coconut. This cake is the black filling of the brigadeiro used as the frosting for the entire cake. It's messy and gooey, and I bet you you won't be able to sit and not steal slice by slice until it's all done.

Alison Stewart: Is there any recipe that you want to shout out before we wrap that we didn't get a chance to talk about?

Sandra Gutierrez: No, not really, because they're all my favorites. It's like asking me what my favorite child is. I will tell you that there is a particular cake from Argentina, again, I offer the variations in different countries, called Pionono de dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is, of course, milk caramel made with house milk in Argentina. It also goes by many, many names in Latin America, and you'll find a lot of desserts made with that. I know that people love their dulce de leche.

Alison Stewart: That was food writer Sandra Gutierrez speaking about her new cookbook, Latinisimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of South America.

 

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