Maricel Presilla
NBCLATINO.COM ・ OCTOBER 2012
"Presilla is Cuban-born, her earliest cooking memories tied to a pre-revolutionary Cuba and then to the Florida and New Jersey kitchens where, like so many immigrants, she kept her beloved island alive through platters of rice and beans and tamales. But it was in the seaside villages and cosmopolitan cities of South and Central America, in the pueblos of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic—every Hispanic country to which she traveled over the course of the last 30 years—that she became the culinary authority she is today. Her book, the third she’s written, chronicles these travels, sharing delightful stories of the Latin cooks who lovingly invite her into their kitchens, from indigenous circular huts, called rukas, in southern Chile, to professional catering outfits in Bogotá to tiny timbiriches in Perú, and teach her their most treasured, authentic ways of putting food on the table.”