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All Of It with Alison Stewart
A New Cookbook About Salvadoran Culture and Cuisine
00:17:01
Karla Tatiana Vasquez has written a cookbook that's an ode to the Salvadoran diaspora.
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- [02:16]
Kusha Navadar
You're listening to all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. A new cookbook presents a diverse mosaic of the Salvadoran immigrants immigrant experience while spotlighting Salvi culinary traditions. Titled the Salvi Sol Cookbook, the book includes 80 recipes from around 30 matriarchs including stewed beef and potatoes mojara frita, which is fried fish, horchata and sandwiches de pollo, just to name a few. The Salvisol Cookbook is out now. Carla Tatiana Vasquez is a food writer, a recipe developer, a food stylist and food justice advocate based in Los Angeles whose work focuses on increasing healthy food accessibility in low income communities. And she is joining us ahead of her event at the Museum of Food and Drink on Water street in Brooklyn tomorrow. So if you're interested in checking that out, it's tomorrow Friday May 24th. It starts at 7pm Carla, welcome to all of it.
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Carla Tatiana Vasquez
Thank you so much. Krisha. I'm so happy to be here with you.
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Kusha Navadar
I'm happy to have you here. And, listeners, we want to hear from you, too. Do you have a favorite Salvadoran food or restaurant in the city? Are you a fan of pupusas like me? What kind of pupusas do you usually order or make at home? Give us a call. Send us a text at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. So, Carla, you know, I'd love to just go into the origin of salva soul. What is one dish that often reminds you of family and home?
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Carla Tatiana Vasquez
There are so many, but definitely the impetus for this project was salpicon de res, which you could describe as a type of meat salad, because you cook the beef and then you allow it to cool, and then you mince it, and then you add a lot of vegetables to it. You have it with frijoles, liquados, some rice. And that was just the epitome of rest and comfort for my, you know, in my childhood, it was just something that let me know, it's Saturday. We can rest as a family and enjoy each other.
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Kusha Navadar
Who made it in your family?
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Carla Tatiana Vasquez
Usually it was my mom, my grandmother, my mama, Lucy. It was always the women who were creating these experiences that, to me, really swept me away into what is El Salvador. What does it mean to touch home when you are far away from it? And I really believe that food is how we touch home. And sometimes recipes can serve as addresses for the people we love because they remind us of them, and they remind us of these moments that, you know, were just formative for us.
- [05:06]
Kusha Navadar
I'd love to talk a little bit more about that idea of culinary traditions in Salvadorian, you know, cuisine. What. What makes Salvadoran traditions in the kitchen unique?
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Carla Tatiana Vasquez
I think there's a lot that we can learn about the process of. Of this experience. You know, often I heard in this process that, you know, what is. Why should there be a Salvadoran cookbook? It's. It's got the same ingredients as other cuisines from Latin America. What's so special about it? Or I'd hear things that say, you know, oh, it's such a small country, right? And the thing is that there is so much tradition even within the regions of El Salvador that make them super distinct. And for me, it always felt like the people I heard shared, you know, their experiences about food or being in El Salvador. They just always seem to be food obsessed. And once you start looking into it, you realize how much Salvadoran cuisine celebrates. Celebrates the flora and fauna of the land. I remember eating flowers for breakfast because we eat the national flower of El Salvador, and that was just something that I thought was so cool. It's like, wow, we eat flowers for breakfast. How. How awesome. Of course, we eat a lot of these Mesoamerican ingredients, like corn, frijoles, but then there's a lot of these tropical flavors, right? You have plantain, you have mango, pineapple. And so it does become this wonderful myriad of flavors that come together with so many different influences. So, yeah, it's been super exciting. I feel like I've written the book, but I feel like I only know about 7 to 10% of what is Salvadoran cuisine.
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Kusha Navadar
Are edible flowers a part of the book? Are there recipes that incorporate that concept?
- [07:03]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
Yes, absolutely. There's actually three edible flowers on the COVID of the book because, you know, I often would hear these narratives about how meat heavy Latin cuisine is or how unhealthy meat habits can be within Latin American cuisines like Salvadoran food. And I always thought that was a wild, wild thing to say compared to my upbringing. There was so many vegetables. And some of the flowers that you will find in the book are flores de loroco, flores de sote. There's a dish for pacaya, which gave me an education about how fond we are of bitter flavors, similarly to Chinese cuisine that will really highlight the bitterness and not hide it. That's how savvy cuisine is. And here in Western cooking, if there's something bitter, you really want to put some extra fat or something sweet to not make it so pronounced. But whenever I, you know, I'm cooking pacayas, and I ask my mom, like, hey, what can I do to, you know, balance out the bitterness? She. She was so stunned. She's like, no. Why would you do that? Then? You can't taste the flour.
- [08:17]
Kusha Navadar
Wow. Listeners, if you're listening and you're wondering, you know, what. What kind of cuisine is this? We're talking about cuisine with Carla Tatiana Vasquez, who's a food writer, a recipe developer, and a food stylist. Her book, the Salvi Sol Cookbook, is out now. And listeners, we're taking your calls as well. Do you have a favorite Salvadoran food or maybe a restaurant in the city? Do you have a favorite kind of pupusa? Do you have a question about how to cook more effectively in the Salvadoran cuisine? Give us a call or Send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433. Carla, you know Salvisoul, you launched Salvisoul, which is a platform dedicated to preserving your traditional food and culture through stories and cooking classes and recipes. You started that in 2015. It's almost a decade later. How has it evolved?
- [09:14]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
My goodness. This really started with a craving. You know, I spoke about Salpicon, and it really. It was a call to action for me to have that craving. I'm going to learn the recipe. I'm going to write it down so that I can visit it as many times as I need to. And, you know, that kind of the beginning of that journey just illuminated a path that said, you know, it's not enough to just know this one recipe. We kind of have to go deeper. We have to go further. And, you know, to my shock, when I looked for cookbooks at that time, there were only two that were available which were both self published. And I thought, wow, this is absurd, though. This is absurd. There are so many Salvadorans in the country and just worldwide. And, you know, a lot of us have a transnational identity. We have roots in El Salvador, obviously, but we're also in different parts of the world, and we're trying to kind of hold both, not necessarily assimilate. That's a very different kind of way to exist as a. As an immigrant, but to hold capacity for both so that we. We feel grounded without having to compromise. And so that's kind of the feeling that moved me into action. And. Excuse me. I started to look for women who were wanting to, you know, document these food ways with me. And so I put a call out. I interviewed women from my family, family, friends, and eventually it became a movement, I want to say, of Salvadorans finding each other and realizing, hey, food is how we touch home. And we don't have recipes documented. We don't have a way to access these food ways, these maps that show us something about, you know, what life was like in El Salvador. And as I collected these recipes, what also became a part of the work was their stories, of course. And a lot of the stories that came through these cooking sessions were real stories that taught us something about living.
- [11:27]
Kusha Navadar
You know, there's. There's the. There's 33 Salvadoran women that the book features stories and recipes from. Is there one story in particular that has really. I mean, all of them you'll remember forever. But is there one that right now really sticks out to you.
- [11:42]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
I think one of my favorite ones that I wrote early on, even in the proposal, is titled maybe the Earthquake. And it's a story about what happens when you have fallen in love. But let's say love, it is someone you meet when there's an earthquake. And I really enjoyed the experience of capturing this story, because what I found in all of the women who were excellent cooks is that they were also excellent storytellers. They never once, you know, experienced writer's block because they know exactly what to do with the listener, and they have you at the edge of your seat. And I felt like I could hear the score of this story that they were telling me. I could see the textures, the colors were so vibrant. Everything was just so alive. And this story, maybe the Earthquake, I really loved because it's a story that highlights how a woman finds her freedom and how empowering that was for her to finally have agency, and how hearing that kind of story is a part of the nourishment that we do when we sit at the table and we eat together. And then we hear these stories that give us the strength to. To face life, you know, so much of cooking. Yes, it's very romantic these days, right? To be in food and to be swept away by how sensual it is. But I think we've forgotten that food is really how we survive. And what we do when we're surviving together and we're nourishing our physical form helps us nourish our soul. That is boosting our morale to keep going. So that is what I hope people feel when they read these stories and cook from the book.
- [13:32]
Kusha Navadar
Yeah, nourishment in all forms. We're talking to Carla Tatiana Vasquez, who's the food writer. Her book is the Salvisol Cookbook. We're talking about it right now. We're also taking listener calls. We have our first caller. Carla, this is Jennifer in Westchester. Jennifer, I understand you might be cooking right now. In fact.
- [13:51]
Jennifer (Caller)
Yeah, yeah, I'm doing dinner prep right now.
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Kusha Navadar
Awesome. Well, welcome to the show. What's on your mind?
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Jennifer (Caller)
So, growing up, we always would have pasteles, one of our favorite things. And, you know, it's basically just like a meat pocket. It's like a corn. Or we use masa to make the shell, and then we stuff it with ground beef and potatoes and diced carrots and peas, and it's just amazing. But whenever I would talk about the pasteles, like my other friends from Puerto Rico or Colombia or Ecuador, they would be like, no, that's an Empanada. And I'm like, no, no, no. Empanadas are different. Empanadas are made out of, like, they have. They're sweet. They're. They're like. They have a platano. Their cases made out of platanos, and they're stuck with, like, a sweet, like, milk custard. And so we would always have this back and forth about, what. What is an empanada and what is a pastele?
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Kusha Navadar
And I just want to make sure. Jennifer, I read here your parents are Salvadoran. Is that right?
- [14:55]
Jennifer (Caller)
Yeah, yeah. They immigrated here back in the 70s.
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Kusha Navadar
Okay. So, you know, any. Any insight on that? Carla, which one is right? Pasteles, Empanadas. Are they the same? Are they different?
- [15:07]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
You know, the. It's amazing. I. Very relatable experience. And similarly, there is, you know, Salvadorans, we have encalada, which, if you translate it, means salad. But that's actually the name of a beverage. It's not an actual, like, salad. And I've actually really have enjoyed learning that there is no right, there is no wrong. There are so many food traditions that, you know, you can trace back to indigenous people groups, and they each had a different way to call it. And one of the things I've loved, you know, I get this question a lot of, like, what's different? What makes you different from the Cuban or Mexican or whatever? And I've learned to say that similarly to children who come from the same parents, you come from the same individuals, you're made up of the same stuff. But if your mom calls you your sister's name, it's still going to be upsetting because that's not your name. So I really love, you know, kind of following what the tradition is. If the name is pastelitos, then that's what I'm going to call it. Or pasteles. If the name is empanadas, that's what we're going to call it. And there is a way to kind of trace a lot of these connections. And, you know, there's little stories. The food history of different dishes is so fascinating, but it really just tells you how culture. Food, culture is alive, right? It changes. There's an ebb and flow to it. If we had one specific. This is what's correct and this is what's not, then that would actually mean that the culture is dying because no one' you know, walking with it into the future. There's no evolution of it.
- [16:50]
Kusha Navadar
You know, very quickly, I want to get to one of the recipes in there, too, that I think touches on this, in the book, you have a recipe for curdito which is a combination of cabbage, onion, carrot, spice, oregano, and vinegar. I'm looking at the clock. We've got about a minute and a half left. But I understand there's different methods for preparing curdito as well. Is that right?
- [17:09]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
Yes, absolutely. There's different methods. A lot of folks will par cook the vegetables and then add their vinegar mixture. But there some folks that don't enjoy vinegar, then there's other folks. Actually, the traditional way to prepare it was with vinagre casero, which means homemade vinegar, which was often made with pineapple peels. Now people use apple cider vinegar because you may not have time to make your own pineapple vinegar. So it's a lot of adaptation. I think for me, it just says it's an effort to keep this food culture, this food practice alive, using what you have in your pantry, using what you have in your new home, which often is, you know, the work of your survival, like you are fighting to always have a grasp at home. So, yeah, curtido can be made in several different ways. Some people totally nix the vinegar idea and only use citrus. So I enjoy that. I enjoy learning all the different adaptations of a recipe because it's someone saying, in spite of all the things that I may not have or my limitations or my allergies or whatever, I will insist on practicing this food ways that connects me to home.
- [18:28]
Kusha Navadar
That's wonderful. And it sounds like a major theme as well that cuts through all the stories and the recipes about Salvadoran food and the traditions. Would you say that's fair?
- [18:38]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
Yes, 100%.
- [18:39]
Kusha Navadar
Yeah. So, listeners, if you would like to find out more about Salvadoran food and these stories of these 33 women and just the traditions and the tasty parts of it, go check out the Salvi Soul Cookbook. It's out now. We've been talking to the author, Carla Tatiana Vasquez, the food writer, the recipe developer, and the food stylist. Carla, thank you so much.
- [19:03]
Carla Tatiana Vasquez
Thank you so much for having me. I've had a pleasure.
- [19:07]
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- [19:37]
Parrigold Home Furnishings Advertiser
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