Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook

JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER - Over 90 delicious, deeply personal recipes that tell the story of Puerto Rico’s Stateside diaspora from the United States’ first Puerto Rican food columnist, award-winning writer Illyanna Maisonet.

＂A delicious journey through purpose, place, and the power of food that you won’t want to miss.＂--José Andrés, chef, cookbook author, and founder of World Central Kitchen

ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Simply Recipes
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Smithsonian Magazine, Delish, Vice

Illyanna Maisonet spent years documenting her family’s Puerto Rican recipes and preserving the island’s disappearing foodways through rigorous, often bilingual research. In Diasporican, she shares over 90 recipes, some of which were passed down from her grandmother and mother--classics such as Tostones, Pernil, and Arroz con Gandules, as well as Pinchos with BBQ Guava Sauce, Rabbit Fricassee with Chayote, and Flan de Queso.

In this visual record of Puerto Rican food, ingredients, and techniques, Illyanna traces the island’s flavor traditions to the Taino, Spanish, African, and even United States’ cultures that created it. These dishes, shaped by geography, immigration, and colonization, reflect the ingenuity and diversity of their people. Filled with travel and food photography, Diasporican reveals how food connects us to family, history, conflict, and migration.

Illyanna Maisonet was America’s first Puerto Rican food columnist for a major newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, and sold out pop-up dinners across the San Francisco Bay Area. An IACP award winner for narrative food writing, she has collaborated with José Andrés for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story wrap party, contributed recipes to Rancho Gordo, authored a crowdfunded cookbooklet, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Bon Appétit, Saveur, Food52, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, and more.

Michael W. Twitty is a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian, and author of the award-winning The Cooking Gene. He is personally charged with preparing, preserving, and promoting African American foodways and its parent traditions in Africa and her Diaspora and its legacy in the food culture of the American South. He is also a Judaic studies teacher from the Washington, D.C., area.