Cook and Enjoy the Language: The Best Spanish Food Books To Help You Cook

How many times have you seen a lot of beautiful Spanish food books, with great pictures that look delicious? You can start to browse them, and to read a recipe, but you give up when you find that the ingredients are absolutely unknown to you … and furthermore, you think you would not even know where to find them.

Well, now you will have no excuses because we present a solution, a book containing all those unknown terms. And on top of that, two other excellent Spanish food books with the best recipes of two Latina celebrities.

This is a fun way to learn a little more Spanish in every recipe …

Eat, Drink, Think in Spanish

The first one is a dictionary / phrasebook for the kitchen, Eat, drink, think in Spanish by Lourdes Castro, professor and chef who loves teaching and cooking.

It´s a book divided into two parts, the first one is an English-Spanish list of ingredients, cooking techniques, and even meat cuts translated to the terms used in most Latin American countries. The second part is a Spanish-English list where you can find Spanish words that have no translation. In those cases, the author gives an easily understood explanation.

Eva’s Kitchen

Other interesting Spanish food books are written by famous people. One of them is Eva’s Kitchen (La Cocina de Eva Longoria). She is probably known best from her role as Gabrielle Solis on the famous show “Desperates Housewives.” Maybe you could not imagine that in her free time she loves to cook for her family and friends. In this book you’ll find delicious recipes she learned as she grew up, on a ranch in Texas, as well as some recipes she discovered during trips around the world.

In this fantastic book you could find, appetizers, soups, salads, fish, poultry, beef, dressings, sauces,tortillas and also drinks and desserts. It’s a perfect way to practice with your food dictionary mentioned above.

La cocina de los Estefan

The other book you will enjoy, especially if you like Cuban music, is La cocina de los Estefan, a beautiful journey about the food background of this fascinating couple, Emilio and Gloria! Gloria Estefan was born in a family where the kitchen was the family meeting point. She used to spend hours with her grandmother Consuelo there. The book contains sixty recipes with Cuban food, covering from yuca frita y boliche to bread pudding and the famous mojito.

The couple said in the book “This was a way to transmit our culture, just as we do with music.” You may already know they own a restaurant chain called “Bongos Cuban Café,” where you can find the Cuban culture in the menu and the music.

Now you have the tools to get into your kitchen and start preparing Latin American food, you have two excellent books with delicious Creole recipes, written in Spanish and in an entertaining way! You also have a large dictionary with culinary terms, to find and understand the exact ingredient you need. And finally, if you look at the recipes and photos of the dishes featured in these books you will be hungry ….. like me!

As a close, here’s a great Speaking Latino example from the first book: the names in Latin America for BEAN: frijol, poroto, judía, habichuela, ejote, vainita, and chaucha.

What other words do you know for BEAN?

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