At this year’s Gourmand Awards in Paris, the anthem of a Colombian mother and daughter in the traditional leaf-wrapped delicacies of their homeland was named the best cookbook in the world. Mother Zoraida “Chori” Agamez (Soraida “Chori” Agames) and daughter, Heidy Pinto, who have been cooking since childhood, wrote the award-winning book, “Envueltos”, as a chronicle of the Colombian approach to this delicacy extending from the tamales of Mexico and Guatemala to the humitas of Chile.
All variations require a type of dough – or, masa – of cornmeal or yucca flour or banana or rice flour, which is filled with delicacies: either pork, chicken and other meats, or beans and vegetables. Then they wrap the delicacy in corn leaves or other leaves to cook it, usually steamed.
A mother and daughter come from Barrancabermeja in northern Colombia, but almost four years ago they decided to travel around the country to collect traditional recipes. “For a long time we organized technical teaching workshops to make envueltos. “We focused on the masa, the dough, but people wanted to know more about the wraps,” Pinto explained. “So we started traveling all over Colombia looking for envueltos, finding out where they are popular, what their local names are and how they make them. We collected over 300 recipes “.
On the Mother and Daughter website – El Toque Colombiano – there is a website with a map of all the local cuisine traditions they found ( http://www.eltoquecolombiano.com/mapa-de-los-envueltos) but for the book the cooks-researchers were forced to narrow the list. “We started testing until we couldn’t take it anymore,” Pinto confessed, laughing. Eventually they decided to focus only on the recipes that used corn flour, yucca and banana.
Daniel Guerrero, a Spaniard who has lived in Colombia for years, stumbled upon the blog of a mother and daughter and said he wanted to publish the recipes. The two said they were looking for a publisher, so Guerrero got the rights and planned to launch his new publishing house, “Hambre de Cultura (Culture Hunger)” with the book “Envueltos”. They were about to go to the printing press when the pandemic struck. Guerrero decided to move on. Lockdown helped sales as orders from Colombians flocked to Europe, Asia and even Australia longing for their homeland. Now, a third edition is being prepared.
Last May, “Envueltos” was shortlisted for the Gourmand Awards, and recently mother and daughter competed in Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Ireland and New Zealand to win the “world best of the best” award. “In difficult times, in moments of sorrow, cooking will always be part of the solution. “Long live tradition, envueltos and Colombian cuisine,” they wrote in a post on their Instagram account.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
.
