809: SalviSoul with Karla T. Vasquez and The Food of Southern Thailand with Austin Bush

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

American Public Media

Arts, Food

4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we talk about cuisines from opposite ends of the world. We start by diving into the first, traditionally-published cookbook about Salvadorian cuisine with Karla T. Vasquez. She collected traditional recipes and techniques while documenting stories from the hands that made the dishes. Karla is the author of The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them. She left us with her recipe for a delicious Salvadoran Quesadilla. Then, we explore Southern Thai regional cuisine with author Austin Bush. Austin researched the diverse and unique cuisine of Southern Thailand through travel and cooking alongside local cooks He’s the author of The Food of Southern Thailand and he leaves us with a recipe for Simple Thai-Style Rice Salad - Khaao Yam.

Broadcast dates for this episode:

August 30, 2024 (originally aired)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Frances Lamb and this is the splendid table from APM. What does it mean to be the first? I mean we have so many words for that, the
0:21.2	Premier, the Pioneer, the Trailblazer. We think of it as a thing to be celebrated, but we don't often think of how lonely it can be. Now, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be obtuse. The reason I'm thinking about this is because our
0:34.8	guest today, Carla Vasquez, is the first author to write a cookbook in English on the food of El Salvador.
0:42.4	And she did it because she missed the taste of home.
0:45.6	It's a delicious and fascinating cuisine, but what really got me when reading the
0:50.4	book, the Salvi Soul cookbookbook are the stories. She gathered her recipes
0:55.1	from dozens of Salvadoran women who ended up sharing not just their
0:58.5	ingredients and techniques with her but much of their life stories too. Their joys and pains, their departures from a homeland,
1:05.9	both ravaged by civil war and beloved by its people.
1:09.9	It's a moving and delicious book. And joining me now is Carla Vasquez. So hi Carla, thanks for coming.
1:18.2	Oh my goodness, hi Francis, I'm happy to be here. We're very excited to have you and this beautiful book with all these incredible stories.
1:28.0	Let's actually start with the book, how the book came to be.
1:31.0	You were born in El Salvador, but you moved to the US very young.
1:36.0	And at one point you write in the book that you went to a library in Los Angeles where you live and where you grew up.
1:42.0	And you asked the librarian to help you find a book on the history of the food of El Salvador and what do they say to you?
1:50.0	They pretty much said if you want a book on Salvadoran food history, it seems like you'll have to be the one to write it.
1:59.0	I had been craving certain foods from my childhood and I really felt that I was an adult.
2:08.2	I felt like I should be able to cook these.
2:10.6	I had just gotten married.
2:13.6	I wanted to kind of have that woman's moment of like,
2:18.0	I know these recipes, I'm going to cook them.
2:20.8	I'm the senior de my case, you know, I'm the queen of my castle and you do that by throwing down in the kitchen and I felt this severe handicap of like I don't have the tools, I don't have the skills and so I'm I'm such a library kid every
	...

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