Old Havana Cookbook: Cuban Recipes in Spanish and English

by Rafael Marcos (Translator), Rosemary Fox (Illustrator)

Havana is one of the oldest and most picturesque cities of the western hemisphere. It was a popular winter destination for North American tourists in the 1950s, and this cookbook recaptures the spirit of Old Havana-- Habana la vieja-- and its celebrated culinary traditions. Cuban cuisine, though derived from its mother country, Spain, has been modified and refined by locally available foods like pork, rice, corn, beans and sugar, and the requirements of a tropical climate. Fine Gulf Stream fish, crabs and lobsters, and an almost infinite variety of vegetables and luscious tropical fruits also have their places on the traditional Cuban table. This cookbook includes over 50 recipes, each in Spanish with side-by-side English translation-- all of them classic Cuban fare and old Havana specialties adapted for the North American kitchen. Among the recipes included Ajiaco (famous Cuban Stew), Boiled Pargo with Avocado Sauce, Lobster Havanaise, Tamal en Cazuela (Soft Tamal), Quimbombo (okra), Picadillo, Roast Suckling Pig, and Boniatillo (Sweet Potato Dulce), along with a whole chapter on famous Cuban cocktails and beverages.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference

123 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1999

Reviews

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the only cuban cookbook I own, and it was nice to be able to see what goes into some of my favorites. Neat that it's bilingual, although that doesn't really help me. ^.^

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Free for the Kindle, so that was a bonus, but otherwise, a disappointment. The format was messed up so the the English and Spanish on the recipes was occasionally mixed up. Fortunately, my Spanish is good enough that I can figure out where the recipes overlap and then I can sort it out, but it's annoying, to say the least. Not enough dessert recipes, all the drink recipes are alcoholic, and there just weren't enough recipes in general. Still, I bookmarked some of the chicken recipes and the black beans! I haven't tried any yet, but they do sound good. I wish there were suggestions on substitutions for some of the ingredients. We'll see how they turn out.

[Scott Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The recipes look great and I will be trying some of them soon. The book is a little hard to follow on the Kindle as the translations come page by page. You will get halfway through an English sentence and be reading Spanish. Just page down and you will find the second half of the sentence in English and continue reading.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was interesting having the recipes in Spanish and English, although I did skip past the Spanish pages. Not quite sure that I'll make any of these, but still interesting to flick through.

[Ken · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horribly bad job of editing, the languages are frequently mixed. You don't have to read both languages to figure it out, but it's frustrating.

[Ken Weinert]

False

[Alison]

freebie