Las Islas Bonitas

Author and documentarian Von Diaz celebrates the traditional cooking techniques of tropical islands

- EMILY D. CREWS

Ior Von Diaz, the food cultures of the world’s islands have something to teach us all. “In a challenging and rapidly changing world, we should look to islanders and their ways of cooking as resources” for honoring history, tradition, and community, she says. The stories and recipes of her newest cookbook, Islas: A Celebration of Island Cooking (Chronicle Books, 2023), help readers do precisely that. Islas is anchored in Diaz’s own experience as an islander—her family originates from Puerto Rico, and she returns there often from her home in the South—and brought to life by her talent as a documentarian as she highlights the history and creativity of tropical foodways and the people, especially women, who preserve them.

The book is organized around six cooking techniques: marinating; pickling and fermentation; braising and stewing; frying; grilling, smoking, and roasting; and steaming and in-ground cooking. These methods have been passed down generation to generation and have persisted through colonialism, foreign tourism, and ecological change. Each technique is paired with a beautifully written meditation on a different location where it is practiced, from Curaçao and Guam to Madagascar, Puerto Rico, and the Seychelles. With recipes for dishes like Seychellois eggplant chutney, Filipino barbeque, and Curaçaoan keshi yena (a stuffed cheese dish), Islas is an invitation to home cooks of any skill level to taste real life on the island.

Islas covers so much ground— geographically, narratively, culinarily. How did you decide to write this particular kind of cookbook?