Reading List: 5 Amazing Latino Cookbooks + Latin Twist GIVEAWAY!

You could go search for a recipe online, but there’s something luxurious about Latino cookbooks. When you flip through the pages and read over the careful and detailed recipes, you just know the author spent weeks on the recipe. And looking at the flawless photos, you can just tell that the creative team may have spent hours or days on a particular picture. There’s a lot of love and care (not to mention hard work!) that go into making a gorgeous cookbook.

With all of the stunningly beautiful cookbooks out there, it was certainly difficult to narrow down the selection. Great cookbooks are a unique combo of food journalism, culture reporting, travel writing and unforgettable photography – these five books have all that and more.

Ceviche: Peruvian Kitchen
By Martin Morales
This stunning book is as much a journey through Peru and its gorgeous food culture as it is a cookbook. The author promises “authentic recipes for lomo saltado, anticuchos, tiraditos, alfajores and pisco sours” and it certainly delivers. But you also get a look at the diversity of flavors in a Peruvian kitchen. There are Peruvian-Japanese fusion dishes and Afro-Peruvian dishes that pepper the book. Readers can expect to find images of many heavenly dishes like Tacu Tacu de Palta, aka avocado and rice fritters, but also peeks at the seaside or a rustic market. It’s a cookbook and travel book in one, and a must-have.

The Cuban Table: A Celebration of Food, Flavors and History
By Ana Sofía Peláez and Ellen Silverman
Like Ceviche, The Cuban Table takes readers on a journey to a place far away. Through scenes of Cuba and Miami, the authors paint a picture of both places and of Cubans split into two countries, but keeping close through their food and memories. Ana Sofía Peláez, known in the blogosphere as Hungry Sofia, describes the beautiful combination of food and culture that she’d come to know in Miami like this:

“I’d come for the food, but the stories of political upheaval, exile, challenges, celebration, scarcity, and abundance were wonderful, too, as well as the images the stories inspired—orange groves rising out of iron-rich red earth, and boulevards lined with avocado trees, smokehouses filled with freshly made sausages, and fishing villages celebrating a good catch, kids rushing down hills on royal palm leaves turned into sleds, and horse-drawn dairy carts loaded down with metal cántaras of fresh milk topped with cream so thick that just a little bit of salt sufficed to make butter.”

It goes without saying that the writing is as lush and gorgeous as the images, and the food is even better.

Del Blog a La Mesa
By Claudia Varleta, Paulina Briones, Pilar Hernández and Bárbara Achondo
Food bloggers, listen up: If you’ve ever wanted to write a cookbook, this must be on your bookshelf. This beautiful Spanish-language cookbook is the result of a collaboration of four Chilean super bloggers, including Pilar Hernandez of En Mi Cocina Hoy, a Houston-based South American food blogger. The four authors are economists, doctors, commercial engineers, journalists and mothers brought together by a love for their food. Each page showcases a unique recipe of comida de casa – good, wholesome food that moms would be proud to make for their family. Each dish is perfectly modern with a nod to traditional cooking roots. And while it is home cooking, the images would put even the best of Pinterest to shame.

Latin Twist: Traditional & Modern Cocktails
By Vianney Rodriguez and Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack
Latin Twist is like a fantastical South American cocktail crawl come to life. Authors Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack of Muy Bueno Cookbook and Vianney Rodriguez of Sweet Life (both Tejanas!) take readers on a tour of Latin America through their cocktails. Readers will learn to make Mexico’s micheladas, palomas and ponches, but they’ll also be introduced to unexpected drinks like a tepache or Mexico lindo. From the Dominican Republic, we have the gorgeous Morir Soñando, which tastes like a spiked orange creamsicle. Fans of Colombian cuisine will love the Aguardiente Sour. Hondoras, Spain, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil – there are a lot of amazing drinks packed into 225 pages. Even if you host a cocktail party every week, you still wouldn’t run out of ways to surprise and delight your friends. Thanks to this book, you’ll surely become the resident cocktail expert.

Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor
By Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack, Veronica Gonzalez-Smith and Evangelina Soza
If you learned to cook from your mom and your grandmother, this book will tug at your heartstrings and bring you back to the kitchen. The women behind this book represent three generations of Latina cooks. Grandmother Jesusita, the first-generation Tejana, established the foundation of Mexican cooking for her family. Her daughter, Evangelina inherited her recipes (like the Salsa Casera de Jesusita) and created her own (like the Frijoles Enchilados). Daughters Yvette and Veronica take the fundamentals and create something new, modern and updated for current tastes (like Tilapia con Salsa de Mango y Aguacate). This book is an exploration of family, a journey through Mexican food in the U.S. and thoroughly delicious.