Abrazar la Tierra: Memorias Colectivas de la Cocina Ancestral de Coqui, Choco

This book explores the foodways of a small community on Colombia’s Pacific coast where most of the residents are of Afro-Colombian descent.  

Handsome photography gives us sense of a lush, verdant place where people rely on locally grown and caught foods to produce dishes such as:

• Corn and coconut milk porridge scented with vanilla

• Fish-stuffed arepas made with a plantain dough

• Cheese and potato soup

• Chicken, spinach, and carambola salad

• Ginger-cinnamon cake, typically prepared atop a wood-burning stove

Many recipes are attributed to particular local cooks, and a recurring theme is that many of the simplest, most traditional foods are passing out of fashion, a theme which recurs in several essays on vanishing practices, such as birth and death celebrations.

A welcome and touching effort to preserve aspects of a distinctive way of life.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. In Spanish.