SACRAMENTO, Calif. — One of Sacramento’s native daughters just released one of the hottest cookbooks on the market. Her feelings about the city, though, seem conflicted.
Illyanna Maisonet’s “Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook” stands out by refusing to adhere to rigid definitions of Puerto Rican food and recipes. Instead, it’s a celebration of the dishes Maisonet and the other the 5.5 million “Diasporicans” grew up on and made their own, such as Hawaiian-influenced pastele stew or bread pudding known as “budin” with California walnuts.
“Diasporican” has earned glowing reviews from NPR, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Eater, among others, since being published by Ten Speed Press on Oct. 18. It’s a cookbook not for Puerto Ricans, but for “the tribe of Ni De Aquí, Ni De Allá (‘not from here, not from there’).”
