Product Description

An evocative feast for all the senses, A Taste of Old Cuba combines a Cuban expatriate's charming and vivid memories of a childhood on the idyllic island before Castro's revolution with more than 150 recipes for delicious, authentic, and traditional Cuban dishes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23410 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-26
• Released on: 1994-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
When reading de O'Higgins's first cookbook, evocative prose seems to bring a distant Cuba back to life. Thanks to a lifelong love of Cuban food and devotion to her extended family, O'Higgins never lost touch with her Caribbean roots: she was raised there in the 1920s and '30s. With a sensibility that is responsive to both the flavors of food and the feelings that accompany meals remembered, the writer lets readers understand the myriad of influences that have formed Cuban cuisine. From her Catalan grandmother came recipes for cocido and sopa de ajos-classic Spanish soups. From her father, sportsman and bon vivant, came recipes for rabbit stews and lisa frita, or black mullet fish, pan-fried in olive oil and lime juice. Dried shrimp, a staple of the Chinese immigrants who settled in Cuba, makes a Cuban-style fried rice when blended with saffron, Valencia rice and pimentos. The 150 recipes O'Higgins collected and tested are clear and accessible, with prefaces that both entertain and inform the cook, making the book a worthwhile addition to the cookbook lover's library. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Lluria de O'Higgins grew up in Cuba during the 1920s and 1930s, and her food memoir offers a look at a bygone culture as well as recipes for classic Cuban specialties. Because the author's family was rich for the early part of her life but thereafter relatively poor, she draws on a broader range of experiences-including both elaborate meals and simpler ones (she fondly describes some favorite dishes as "declasse")-than Mary Urrutia Randelman in Memories of a Cuban Kitchen (LJ 10/15/92). Her well-written text provides a vivid picture of her early life, and the recipes are indeed authentic. Joyce LaFray's Cuba Cocina (LJ 6/16/94) showcases today's Cuban American cuisine; Lluria de O'Higgins fills in the background. For most collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
The text in this debut memoir/cookbook is nothing short of charming and recalls Zarela Martinez's Food From My Heart. O'Higgins paints her pre-Castro Cuban childhood in idyllic colors and calls a lost world to life. Family photographs add to the sweet, personal feel. However, while the essays and notes benefit from intimate detail, the recipes do not: Many feel like a-pinch-of-this-a-pinch-of-that attempts to nail down techniques that are second nature to the author. For example, directions for fried plantains instruct, "Fry the plantain slices until they are almost black but not burned" without giving any idea of how much time that will take - a problem for novice plantain cookers. Variety apparently has never been the spice of life in Cuba: Many of these are more or less similar recipes for the same dish. There are three different black-bean recipes and four for cooking rice, and that's only in the chapter on rice and beans. Another section gives 14 rice entrees, most with similar seasonings. O'Higgins warns that Cuban desserts are achingly sweet (because sugar production was the backbone of the Cuban economy, consuming it came to be considered a patriotic act), and she is not kidding. A light eight-by-eight-inch sponge cake is drowned in a cup of port and more than two cups of a supersweet lime-cinnamon syrup. Good reading, bad eating. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

A Taste of Old Cuba
I cannot tell how much I love this book. When i first bought it i took it to my grandmother to share it with her. She got misty eyed reading it, she said that it reminded her of her mother cooking for her and her 11 brothers & sisters in Cuba - there were recipes in the book that she had not had since she left Cuba in the 60s. When she passed, she took some of the best cooking with her. The book gives me recipes that taste exactly the way i remember them - never fails. The following Christmas i bought 9 copies for my family's 3rd generation women so that we don't forget, and have since bought several more as gift whenever the subject of good Cuban recipes has come up. Buy the book, i promise you won't need anything else!

EXCELLENT CUBAN RECIPE BOOK!!
I first read this book at a Library and enjoyed so that I took it out a second time. To a person who knows cuban food, this book is the portal to paradise. The recipies are authentic and are written very clearly and very easy to understand. I lived in Matanzas and Varadero during the 50s and the reminiscenses are true. I enjoyed this book tremendously and I will recommend it to many of my friends. It would be great if translated to spanish. A lot of people that live in Miami who came to the US from Cuba do not speak english.

Right on the mark!!!
If you are looking for authentic Cuban recipe's, then this is the book for you.Having been raised in a Cuban household I grew up with just these kinds of foods. But alas I never did pay attention to the actual cooking,now that I have my own family, I needed and wanted these recipe's, but all previous book's I purchased were a big disappointment,they all missed the mark when it came to the authentic taste of my abuelas(grandma's) cooking! Finally I came across Mrs,Lluria De O'Higgins book and I am delighted to report that these are the recipe's I recall from my childhood. From the arroz con pollo to the paella all are truly wonderful!! Thank You Mrs, O'Higgins, I now have something to pass on to my own daughter!