Cocina
Maricel E. Presilla

Maricel E. Presilla is a culinary historian, chef and author specializing in the cuisines of Latin America and Spain. She has lectured for organizations ranging from the James Beard Foundation to the Smithsonian Institution. Her most recent book is The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes (Ten Speed Press), and she has completed a major Latin American cookbook for W.W. Norton, forthcoming in 2008. A native of Santiago de Cuba, she is co-owner and chef of two Hoboken, N.J., restaurants, Zafra and Cucharamama, and was a 2007 James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic.

Her website is www.maricelpresilla.com.

Write to her at mpresilla@miamiherald.com.

Top Story

These mangoes are among the 450 types grown at Williams Grove.

MARICEL E. PRESILLA/MARICEL E. PRESILLA

Sweet taste of mango stirs Cuban childhood memories

When I returned to Cuba in 1999 after 29 years, it took me days to gather the courage to drive up to Cuabitas, our old neighborhood in the mountains above Santiago, to see what had become of my mother's childhood home. Divided between two families, it was a shadow of the graceful, mustard-colored mansion I remembered, a happy place surrounded by fruit groves lovingly tended by my grandfather, Santiago Parlad�, and his daughters.

Cocina Recipe: Rice With Mango (Arroz con Mango)

COCINA

Onions define Latin flavor

''The fragrance of the earth is alive in your crystalline nature,'' Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote of the humble onion. And of all the seasoning ingredients we use, it is the onion, with its earthy sweetness and sharp pungency, that best defines Latin flavor.
COCINA

The quest for quintessential black beans

Cubans call their bean soups potajes, after the French potage. In French cooking, the term is synonymous with soup, from consomm�s to creamy pur�es, but for us a potaje is a slow-cooked legume soup with a thick broth. Red kidney or black beans, for example, must be simmered until they are so soft that some melt into the cooking liquid, thickening it, while others retain their shape but melt in your mouth. Though we can eat potaje as a soup, we love it best spooned over fluffy...
COCINA

North Atlantic scallops meet South American chef

When I travel for work, meals at friends' homes keep me sane and rooted. When the dinner is as delicious as one I enjoyed a few weeks ago in Toronto at the home of Colombia-born television producer Mary Luz Mej�a, it is a gift that keeps on giving.
Tropical fruit: Canistel is an easy sell

It is early afternoon, and the blazing sun blinds me as I keep pace with Noris Ledesma, moving swiftly between rows of small, bushy tropical trees. I am still recovering from a close encounter with a pair of noisy geese who think the Colombian-born horticulturist is their mother when a gust of wind, smelling of earth and mulch, blows off my hat.
COCINA

Meeting a master of Mexican cooking

Diana Kennedy, who makes a rare South Florida appearance on Sunday, has been a hero of mine since I read her first book, The Cuisines of Mexico. With this groundbreaking 1972 paean and her celebrated The Art of Mexican Cooking (reprinted last year by Clarkson Potter), Kennedy introduced authentic Mexican cooking to North Americans.
Cooking Cuban in Malaysia

Cubans of my generation, brought up reading adventure novels and listening to radio serials, know Malaysia as the land of Sandokan, ''The Tiger of Malaysia'' (El tigre de la Malasia).