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Cocina Criolla (Puerto Rico)
- Year
- 1954
- Era
- 20th century
- Origin
- Puerto Rico · Americas
- Language
- Spanish
- Category
- Caribbean
Cocina Criolla, first published in 1954, stands as the foundational reference work of Puerto Rican home cookery, codifying island dishes such as sofrito, asopao, mofongo, and pasteles for a modern domestic readership. Carmen Aboy Valldejuli's systematic, measured approach lent criollo cooking the authority of a national canon, and successive Spanish-language editions made the volume a fixture in Puerto Rican kitchens across the island and the diaspora.
Cooking from this book
Arroz con gandules
Signature dishMore than any other plate, arroz con gandules has come to stand for the Puerto Rican table that Valldejuli helped codify for home cooks. It is a one pot rice cooked with pigeon peas, tinted and perfumed by sofrito and achiote, often enriched with cured pork. Served at Christmas and Sunday gatherings across the island, it appears here as a benchmark of criollo cookery, the dish by which a Puerto Rican kitchen is judged.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
