Latinísimo by Sandra Gutierrez

My on line cookbook group is cooking out of this book this month, and I am surprised by a number of things about it. The first is that I did not know this book had been published--it is a relatively comprehensive cookbook covering all 21 Latin countries in the Americas. That is both its strength and its weakness. Do you need to own it? I would say yes--I have been going to Central and South America since I was a child, and I have been an avid home cook for almost 50 years and there were many things that I learned about the region and the cuisine from reading this book. There is a lot of information about the differences in cuisine across the region, including the kinds of peppers and what you can do with them that are worth the price of admission. The downside is that while it is almost unliftable in weight, it lacks depth into any particular cuisine--that it unsurprising, but this is not the be all and end all of Latin American cooking--rather it is an excellent starting point and one that should be explored. It is available on used book sites for under $10 and well worth it.