The SalviSoul Cookbook

Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them

By Karla Tatiana Vasquez

In this collection of eighty recipes, Karla Vasquez shares her conversations with moms, aunts, grandmothers, and friends to preserve their histories so that they do not go unheard. Here are recipes for Rellenos de Papa from Patricia, who remembers the Los Angeles earthquakes of the 1980s for more reasons than just fear; Flor de Izote con Huevos Revueltos, a favorite of Karla’s father, as well as variations on the beloved Salvadoran Pupusa, a thick masa tortilla stuffed with different combinations of pork, cheese, and beans. Though their stories vary, the women have shared experience of what it was like in El Salvador before the war, and what life was like as Salvadoran women surviving in their new home in the United States.

Karla Tatiana Vasquez is a food writer, recipe developer, and food stylist based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been published by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Teen Vogue among others. She founded SalviSoul to preserve her family’s recipes, and since then it’s expanded to focus on cultural memory and intergenerational healing for the Salvadoran diaspora.

Ten Speed Press, 2024, hardcover, 8.3 x 9.35 inches, 288 pages.