Salvadoran cookbook makes history with Beard nomination
'The SalviSoul Cookbook' by L.A. author Karla Tatiana Vasquez on Wednesday became the first entry by a Salvadoran chef or author to be nominated for a James Beard Foundation Book Award.
The significance is not lost on Vasquez, a fiercely devoted Angeleno who like many others came to the United States from El Salvador as an infant with her family fleeing the Salvadoran civil war.
In 2024, after years of research and rejections, she published 'The SalviSoul Cookbook' with Ten Speed Press. It is a detailed and lovingly rendered compendium of recipes for classic and regional Salvadoran dishes, a hardcover that feels sprinkled with a touch of L.A. finesse and sensitivity.
The book is anchored by richly reported profiles of the women whose recipes have inspired Vasquez's cooking, and taken together, offer a testament to the resilience and poetry of the Salvadoran diaspora, one that is integral to L.A.'s modern identity.
Vasquez, a contributor to The Times, is vocal in her commitment to place Salvadoran American culture and cuisine in the pantheon of U.S. cooking. She received the Beard news with a barrage of ecstatic early-morning messages from her agent and editor when the 2025 nominees were announced.
'These are spaces we're not normally in, and it just feels exciting to think about what this can mean for more Central American stories, certainly Salvadoran stories ... [on] such a huge gap on the cookbook shelf,' Vasquez said a day later. 'This is just another brick we are putting to build that world.'
The moment I heard the news, I immediately thought of Vasquez's salpicón de res.
Technically a salad, similar to a larb, Salvadoran salpicón could go head-to-head with any plate in Latin America for perfecting the balance between coolness and intensity of flavor, especially so with Vasquez's approach.
It was one of the dishes she made at The Times' Test Kitchen a year ago. After that shoot, I took a large portion home as leftovers and had it for dinner and then lunch the next day, with a fresh bolillo — confirmation of my instinct that Salvadoran salpicón de res is one of those dishes that tastes better and even cooler a day or more later with a fresh splash of lime.
The salpicón is defined by the strength of mint and lime with the minced meat and minced radish. Vasquez says in the book that she identifies the dish with a satisfying Saturday morning: 'It marked the pinnacle of rest.' Salvadoran rice and beans are essential for a full plate of salpicón, but if you're in a rush, you could just as well eat it plain with crumbled tostadas to scoop up bites, or with tears of fresh bolillo from any mercado or panadería in your part of L.A. I know I did.
Get the recipe. Cook time: About 1 hour. Serves 4 to 6.
There's been an upward sprouting of 'Salvi' identity and energy lately in California. In food, new generations are taking Salvadoran cuisine to other planes as seen in restaurants like lauded new Popoca in Oakland or La Pupusa Urban Eatery in L.A., which joined the 101 Best Restaurants of Los Angeles list by Times critic Bill Addison in 2023. It got me thinking about the abundance of Salvadoran and Central American family restaurants we have. And what I like eating when I visit one. It's not pupusas, though pupusas are always nice. It's Salvadoran breakfast and comfort foods.
When learning to cook Salvadoran food, Vasquez also argues: Skip the pupusas. Point taken — have you ever watched one being made?
'I get this question a lot: What's a good dish to start? All they know is pupusas. And I always tell folks, 'Do not start with pupusas.' First of all, it is hard. A lot of these pupuseras are athletes, masters,' Vasquez said. 'Get some basic skills under your belt. Learn how to make an olla de frijoles. Learn the life of an olla de frijoles. … Start with desayuno.'
'The SalviSoul Cookbook' contains a recipe for Platanos Fritos con Frijoles Licuados, but in most places, this dish is casually called breakfast. It is fried plantains, smoothened beans, a hunch of queso fresco, crema and slices of avocado. Versions of this meal also constitute desayuno from Guatemala to Colombia. I love the simple array of distinct, core flavors, and combining them in varying amounts on each forkful. Once or twice, I've made an improvised version of this meal at home.
If I'm craving a Salvadoran lunch, I always go for a pan con pollo (or con pavo). This is the iconic Salvadoran sandwich, similar to Vietnam's bahn mi, or like a good Italian sub — the sort of sandwich that feels like it's telling you something about a people. The marinated turkey or chicken is stuffed into a French roll intended to soak up the recipe's recaudo or marinade, along with slices of tomato, cucumber, radishes and sprigs of watercress. As Vasquez describes in her book, a pan Salvadoreño is a marriage of textures that brings joy in each bite.
Get the recipe. Cook time: 2 hours. Makes 6 sandwiches.
The women who are featured in her book, she said, offered her an education that she could not have gotten at any university or institution. Upon hearing of the book's reception and mounting recognitions, Vasquez said her subjects sometimes politely congratulate her, but easily shrug off the topic. Mainstream stardom is not their concern.
'The lucha that they go through is kind of the language that they speak,' the author said. 'It's good, because these accolades can really blind you sometimes. … They would say, like, 'But did you learn what we told you? In listening to my memories, did you learn how to live when this part of life gets hard?'
'That's the part that tells me that we're made of something that teaches me about living,' Vasquez said.
The connectivity to the history, the culture, as well as the collective traumas of the Salvadoran diaspora pulses throughout the cookbook. The mainstays of Salvi cooking feel reenergized here, even a dish as homey and familiar as sopa de res. When Vasquez's mother 'randomly' gets the urge to make sopa de res, she writes, the extended family somehow hears the rumor, and quickly gathers for 'the warmth, laughs, and arguments.'
'Sopa de res isn't just a meal,' Vasquez says in her book. 'It's an event you don't want to miss.'
Get the recipe. Cook time: 1 hour, 45 minutes. Serves 4 to 6.
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