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By Fabila Santiago, Herald Staff Writer
Published
Wednesday, October 21, 1998, in the Miami Herald
Cuban culinary guru Nitza Villapol -- who taught generations of Cubans how
to cook and, in the last decades, how to cope with a ration book and acute food
shortages -- has died in Havana at age 74, Cuba's official press announced
Tuesday.
The circumstances of her death were not reported.
Villapol was known for her cookbook Cocina al minuto (Cooking to Order),
dubbed ``the bible of Cuban cuisine,'' and for her TV show of the same name. A
Cuban Julia Child of sorts, she also starred on radio cooking shows and wrote at
least two other books on Cuban cooking.
In the 1950s, young brides took their cooking lessons from Villapol. Some of
them later fled to exile in South Florida with their worn copies of Villapol's
Cocina al minuto. Copies of the book -- reprinted in the United States without
her permission, Villapol once complained -- still circulate in Spanish-language
bookstores in Miami-Dade County.
A home economist, Villapol became well versed in making do with little while
studying in wartime England. She put the skills to work decades later in what
became her greatest challenge -- and a controversial role: teaching Cubans how
to cook without meat, milk and a whole range of spices indispensable to
traditional Cuban cooking.
Many Cubans resented her cheerful approach to the shortages, while others
poked fun. Villapol took it in stride.
``The first thing I think about is, `What does the Cuban homemaker have and
what can be done with it?' '' she told a Herald reporter in 1991. ``We're not
starving here. . . . If you have good food habits, you can have a balanced diet
in Cuba. Food habits [in Cuba] are geared toward a society, an economy, that no
longer exists.''
Villapol liked to say she was ``a cultural hybrid.'' Named after a Russian
river by her communist father, she spent her early years in New York. Her
parents returned to the island when she was 9.
Villapol was fond of the food she remembered from her days living in
Washington Heights -- Fig Newtons, liverwurst and Good Humor ice cream.
But she detested mayonnaise. ``An American invention to ruin food,'' she
called it.
Unlike many Cuban cooks, Villapol said she seldom made a sofrito, the
traditional oil-based seasoning mix used to spice up various dishes. She
preferred to season the food as she cooked it, she said.
In South Florida, Villapol was a controversial figure because of her
unyielding support of the Cuban Revolution.
``I believe this damn revolution is right, despite all our problems,''
Villapol said in 1991.
She also criticized Cubans for not eating enough vegetables. ``To old
Cubans,'' she said, ``salad is grass and water. It's not food.''
Although Villapol wrote two other cookbooks -- Sabor a Cuba (The Flavor of
Cuba) and El arte de la cocina cubana (The Art of Cuban Cuisine) -- it was
Cocina al minuto that remained a favorite on both sides of the Florida Straits.
Perusing the first editions is like visiting yesterday's Cuba. The book is
filled with advertisements for American products -- a finned 1958 Dodge being
sold on bustling La Rampa, a new two-cycle Whirlpool washer, Osterizer blenders.
In the first revision after the revolution, all references to the brand
names were dropped.
Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald |