New York, NY: Chronicle (March 2024)

Hardcover.

New in decorated boards.

An intimate reflection on tropical island cooking's bold flavors and big stories, with 125 recipes, from celebrated food writer Von Diaz.

The islands spanning the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans are remarkable places, sharing dozens of ingredients and cooking techniques, including marinating, pickling and fermentation, braising and stewing, frying, grilling and smoking, and steaming and in-ground roasting. Bold flavors drip from the edges of each dish with tastes that represent stories of resistance, persistence, and wisdom passed down from generation to generation.

This narrative cookbook by writer, documentary producer, and author Von Diaz travels across oceans and nations to uplift the shared ancestral cooking techniques of these islands in more than 125 recipes, including intimate profiles of the historical context of each technique, stories from islanders, and step-by-step guides for recreating them at home.

Von Diaz is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian and food historian. She is the author of Coconuts & Collards: Recipes and Stories from Puerto Rico to the Deep South and Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking (March 2024). She is also the founder of La Piña—a Substack newsletter covering the people, ingredients, and systems that shape global cuisine. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Atlanta, GA, she explores the intersections of food, culture, and identity. She has contributed recipes and essays to a number of cookbooks and anthologies and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, StoryCorps, Food & Wine, and Bon Appétit, among many others. In addition, she taught food studies and oral history at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and food writing and audio production workshops at New York University and The New School. She currently sits on the Advisory Board for the Toni Tipton Martin Foundation and is a member of the Journalism Committee for the James Beard Foundation.