Recipe Book for Memory

A cookbook should have splashes of frying, spoonfuls of tomato broth, smudges of flour. The one edited by Zahara Gómez Lucini does not invite that. On the contrary, it makes you want to place the copy in a showcase, in a reliquary.Before flipping through ‘Recipe Book for Memory’ I did not know that recipes, just like blankets and petitions, have the capacity to carry a protest. As soon as I reached the first recipe, I understood what it was all about: “Ranch Steak for Ernesto, January 5, 2011.” The recipe was simple, it had no quantities. Instead, there were countless silences suspended between the steps of preparation. This is a cookbook as much as it is a black box with memories meticulously arranged. And what more direct connection to the past than the favorite food of someone who is no longer here? What remains is the table set and the dishes that will no longer be eaten by the missing from El Fuerte, in northern Sinaloa. Its co-authors, the Rastreadoras del Fuerte, are the mothers, wives, grandmothers, and sisters who remember them in every recipe and who continue to search for them with shovels.In the book, there are just over 25 dishes. There are magnificent photos of the stews with chiaroscuro and lights that frame the smoke on the plates. There are preparations that look tempting. In reality, what moves you to the bone is what is missing. There is no greater nostalgia than gorditas without beans, tacos without salsa, a hot dish waiting to be eaten by someone who is no longer here.For the author, everyday gestures can be subversive. “From your stove, you can pay tribute,” Zahara says. “You can create a network that supports. The space is food; the space in which you share it allows for family discussions. Why are there disappearances? Why does this happen? Making memory and from there acting, making it resonate and move things.”There is something very intimate in the ‘Recipe Book for Memory’. The co-authors share with ingredients a small sapid biography of their missing relatives. The dish remains as a grimace, a symbol of those – their treasures, as the Rastreadoras del Fuerte call those they hope to discover in clandestine graves – who were once alive and who longed, like everyone, for a homemade flavor.No need to shout for pain and demands to have a voice in the roasts sizzling on the griddle, in the bubbling of a long-cooked stew, in the crackling of oil in a pan. But the memory here is also a struggle. Defeatism is death. “They are much more than victims; they are tremendous fighters,” Zahara points out.That is why this book is more about life than death. It is a tribute, an altar with aromas and crumbs that remain on the tablecloth. It is memory that invites action through a sauté, through a deep fry. You should buy it because, in addition to being a fabulous work, fifty percent of the profits go to the women of the families of the disappeared. You should cook with it; dirty it with spoonfuls and spills of tomato broth: cooking some of their recipes will be like bringing together the disappeared in everyday life, connecting them to the hopeful energy of a set table.