Néstor Salazar Silva is a director, writer and broadcaster of programs at CMKO Radio Angulo in Holguín province. This microphone artist -member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) and of the Cuban Agency of Musical Copyright- keeps an open secret known to all: he is an accomplished cook and researcher on good food.
He has won important awards and published numerous books on the subject. Among them, Recetas al alcance de todos (Editorial Oriente’ 2009) co-authored with Rafael Torres; El arroz y el pescado en mi cocina (Editorial Oriente’ 2012) and La salud y la belleza entran por la cocina (Editorial Oriente’ 2016).
For Liber publishing house he published in 2014 Comida que cura y protege. Recetas para el cerebro‚ cabello‚ huesos y colon y en 2016 Los frijoles y otros vegetales excelentes para la salud (Food that heals and protects. Recipes for the brain’ hair’ bones and colon, and in 2016 Los frijoles y otros vegetales excelentes para la salud by Editorial José Martí. Entre cazuelas y fogones el aroma de la cocina cubana and Recetas fáciles de aquí y de allá have been other of his very readable volumes.
Today we approach Nestor with a handful of questions to know his adventures in the most appreciated and necessary art, that of cooking.
Covers, books, Néstor Salazar
How did your love for cooking begin?
The first reference I have of good cooking is that of my great-grandmother Carmen, a rooted Galician in Cuba, as we say about people who “even though they are from other latitudes” adapt to the way of being and acting of Cubans. The smell of her stews flooded the house and its surroundings, “the Galician is cooking” said the neighbors. The chickpea stew, rice with cod, congrí rice, potato tortillas, those smells awakened the taste buds of the most appetizing. I was always looking for an excuse to be near the stove; “boy, don’t be around the kitchen all the time” was the affectionate scolding of the sweet old lady in the flowered apron who threatened to hit me with the ladle with an indulgent smile.
“I think that’s where my love of cooking came from. When I learned to read, there was no magazine or newspaper that published recipes that escaped me. My aunts, seamstresses, collected fashion magazines, which usually had a section on cooking recipes. I was already familiar with the names of Nitza Villapol, María Antonieta Reyes Gavilán y Moenck, Ana Dolores Gómez, Nena Cuenco de Prieto, Carmencita San Miguel, María Radelat de Fontanills, Eugenio Coloma Garcés and others who wrote on the subject and who rooted in me the desire to delve into the magic of casseroles and stoves.
“I still remember on Sunday mornings the TV program Cocina al minuto, where a friendly Nitza Villapol taught us how to prepare the best dishes of Cuban cuisine or from other latitudes, but adapted to our tastes and needs. Next to her, the inseparable Margot -her right arm-, and sometimes also the left one, because many years later I learned that most of the dishes were cooked by her, of course, under Nitza’s instructions. Margot Bacallao, always quiet, inseparable friend and assistant of Nitza Villapol for more than 42 years in her program Cocina al minuto.
“Cultured, intelligent, gifted with a rare capacity for persuasion and profound knowledge of such complex branches as nutrition and dietetics, Nitza Villapol is, without a doubt, the personality who has most influenced the dynamism and updating of Cuban cuisine, and, above all, in the very difficult task of modifying the country’s eating habits,” said writer Jaime Sarusky in 1986 in his Encounter with Cuban Cuisine.
“Another admirer of Nitza, journalist and researcher Ciro Bianchi, wrote: “Because Nitza had to undertake part of her work in times of great shortages: first, when as a result of the U.S. blockade of the largest of the Antilles, Cubans were deprived of traditional products and condiments in their kitchen. Then, when the collapse of the socialist camp cut off the supply of food items that had already become common in the Cuban table”. (1)
“Cocina al minuto” had to go off the air -if I remember correctly- during the Special Period.
“It was the 1990s and the mistake was made of eliminating from television the program Cocina al minuto, which for decades had been hosted by Nitza. In 1996, the then president of the Culinary Federation in Cuba, José Luis Santana, told the press that since the disappearance of the program Cocina al minuto, a certain erroneous policy has been followed of not touching the subject of food in the media. Our homes have been deprived of advice, and that had to be rescued as well.
“We Cubans owe a lot to Nitza Villapol and although there are in our country many good chefs, cooks and writers of books that have as an objective, to divulge, teach or simply suggest us how to feed ourselves, there is no one who surpasses “the angel” that had the so-called “Queen of Cuban cuisine” to achieve that purpose.
Has the panorama changed from the 1990s to today?
“I don’t remember if it was in a speech or in an interview that Fidel Castro mentioned the lack of cookbooks in Cuban bookstores’ he praised the quality of Cuban chefs. We all know that Fidel constantly received visits from personalities from different parts of the world and one of his greatest satisfactions was to introduce them to the delights of Cuban cuisine. Since Fidel mentioned the lack of cookbooks, the panorama changed overnight and publishers became interested in publishing books that perhaps decades ago were sleeping in the so-called “editorial mattress” (books that for one reason or another were not published and spent years in the drawers of the publishers).
“Fortunately’ everything changed and in the mid 90s began to flood the bookstores texts of excellent chefs and writers without “academic” training’ but with great knowledge and love for cooking. Gigantic print runs of up to twenty thousand copies were short-lived on the shelves, no matter the price, the public was eager to acquire books that would “teach” them how to cook with the little or much they could find on the market.
“One of the slowest and most difficult aspects to modify in any culture are behavioral habits, among which are eating habits. For this modification to be true, deep and lasting, it must start from the knowledge of some of the factors that make up these habits and what modifications can be made for the sake of better health (2), stated Nitza Villapol.
“Cookbook writers soon realized that the public was no longer satisfied with just a “recipe book”‘ but that advice on nutrition and dietetics should go hand in hand with recent discoveries about diseases that could be avoided by eating healthily.
“At book fairs, one of the most popular pavilions is the cookbook pavilion, why is this?
“The success of cookbooks is not only in Cuba. Every year the list of cookbooks at any fair in the world gets longer and longer. And it grows with time. Many of these works have become best-sellers and compete even with the novels of prominent writers. David Perlmutter’s Bread Brain, for example, is a publishing success and talks about the effects of sugar, wheat and carbohydrates on the brain and offers a 30-day detox plan. This work is included in a list of books that relate to health care, and was the big new seller at the Barcelona Fair a few years ago.
“Also included are titles such as Cooking for celiacs, by Gabriel Lima; or Recipes to share, by chef Juliana López May, which contains recipes with simple and organic ingredients, most of them vegetarian. López May shares the billboard with a long list of chefs who have their space on cable television. They also face the best-seller lists, and they are: Pablo Massey with Cocina sin excusas; Martiniano Molina with Todas mis recetas or A la parrilla, by Ariel Rodríguez Palacios.
“Another category, within the culinary world, is that of books with a biographical/historical profile, such as Delizia. The Epic History of Italian Food, The Silver Spoon. The Bible of authentic Italian cuisine or How El Bulli works. The latter reveals the creative process and extraordinary techniques of the multi-award winning Spanish restaurant el Bulli (now closed), and its legendary creator Ferrán Adria. In addition to timeless classics, such as Doña Petrona, there are also unusual books: Cocina silvestre. My Witch Recipes, by Brigitte Bulard Cordeau, which shares 100 “magical healing” recipes.
“Although it does not exist as a literary genre, gastronomic literature, that in which cooking, restaurants or chefs are at the center of the plot, seeks to carve out a niche for itself by taking advantage of the effervescence of gastronomy around the world.
“Gastronomic literature is claiming its place based on the rise of cuisine and, although it still has a long way to go, it can achieve it just like the already consolidated travel narrative.
“But there are also novelties such as ‘Himmler’s Cook’ by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, which humorously recounts the epic of a cook devoted to carnal pleasures and revenge who has survived the Armenian genocide, the horrors of Nazism and the delusions of Maoism.
“Also Jonathan Grimwood’s ‘The Last Banquet’, which stars a cook who, during the Enlightenment, searches for the perfect flavor as did the protagonist in the striking novel Perfume, by German Patrick Süskind.
“The almost lustful cocoa stars in some of these novels, such as Deseo de chocolate, in which Care Santos uses a fine porcelain chocolatier as the axis of her novel to weave three historical stages that begin in the 18th century, when this ingredient becomes popular in Barcelona, continues during the bourgeoisie and culminates in the present day.
“For his part’ Reyes Calderon makes Chocolate Afternoons at the Ritz a balsamic book in which the friendship of two women revolves around their monthly appointments at the luxurious hotel and its gastronomic proposals.
“This is happening in other countries. Domestically, too, cookbooks, as we have already said, compete in sales with texts written by renowned authors. “El rey langosta (King Lobster) by Gilberto Smith Duquesne, the most internationally known Cuban chef, practically sells out in a short time in any country where it is presented. Let’s remember that Smith created more than 200 recipes, in his long life as a chef (more than 70 years) and would obtain the most significant culinary recognitions in countries such as Japan, Poland, Switzerland, Germany and France, and would earn the lifetime presidency of the Federation of Culinary Associations of the Republic of Cuba.
“He was Cuba’s gastronomic ambassador. He cooked for Fidel Castro. He also cooked for Juan Carlos I and Felipe González, Manuel Fraga and Georges Pompidou, Gabriel García Márquez and Alejo Carpentier, Brigitte Bardot and Édith Piaf, Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand, Pierre Trudeau and George Papandreou, Julio Iglesias and Joan Manuel Serrat, Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin, Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Garbachev, Juan Bosch and Salvador Allende, Claudia Cardinales and Romy Schneider, Alicia Alonso and Alain Delon. Before 1959 he was Meyer Lansky’s cook, Lucky Luciano’s lieutenant in Havana and head of the mafia in Cuba.
“On April 9, 2010, Gilberto Smith Duquesne died at the age of 90. Of course, if we are talking about classics, we must always mention ‘Cocina al minuto’ by Nitza Villapol’ and others she wrote.
“I also mention Cocina útil’ by Camagüey chef Frank Rodríguez Pino, winner on more than one occasion of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, the only contest in the world that awards cookbooks, wine books, cheese books, digital pages dedicated to gastronomy and restaurants.
“I can’t forget Vilda Figueroa and José Lama with their book Cocina cubana con sabor, they are also included among the Cuban authors who sell the most books.
“And I could also mention Mayra Gómez Fariñas, Eddy Fernández Monte -current president of the Culinary Federation of the Republic of Cuba-, International Chef Bartolo Cárdenas Alpízar, Chef Santiago Gutiérrez Lezcano, Janet Ortiz Vian, Olga García Yero, Fernando Fornet Piña, Madelaine Vázquez Gálvez and others that escape my mind, all with an extensive editorial work and well received by readers. That is to say that in Cuba there is a great potential of cookbook writers, and now also of cookery and nutrition, not negligible”.
Nestor, do you have any memories about one of those housewives who were true professors in matters of cooking?
“My grandmother used to say: “in the kitchen, the one who learns from a renowned chef has the right to know, as well as the one who learns from a humble cook”. In my case, this was no exception. I remember with great affection all the people I have already mentioned, my grandmothers, aunts, cooks, writers… I have learned something from everyone and I give an example: the word polenta, what is polenta? I asked my friend Lourdes Benítez, wife of the beloved and admired Joaquín González Álvarez, physics teacher of several generations of Holguineros who was the one I heard that term, well polenta, she answered me, “is something you are tired of eating, because you have told me, ! corn flour!”, and she explained to me, “Polenta is a traditional Italian dish that starts from corn flour, which is cooked with water or some kind of broth or fumet, although it offers many forms of savory or sweet preparation”.
“Lourdes was a cook, as we say “old school”, almost as a child she learned housework, among which, of course, cooking which was what she enjoyed the most, and, above all, baking. I remember her recipes for arroz con pollo a la chorrera, picadillo a la criolla, tambor de pollo, croquetas de arroz, croquetas de plátanos pintones stuffed with tasajo, empanaditas and chiviricos, in short’ the list of dishes she taught me would be long. After so many years’ I still keep with great affection a book of the old Cuban cuisine that he gave me as a gift”.
Notes
1-Ciro Bianchi: “La mujer que escribía de cocina”‘ Juventud Rebelde’ May 31, 2001.
2- Idem
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