Retrievers learn the art and heart of cooking Salvadoran food at True Grit’s Test Kitchen

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 14:24:28 -0500
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A recent UMBC News & Magazine article highlighted our recent "More Than Pupusas," cooking demonstration hosted in conjunction with UMBC Dining Services.

“Recipes are like an address to a homeland, but they’re also very personal to your own story,” said Karla T. Vasquez, author of The SalviSoul Cookbook, in True Grit’s Test Kitchen. Celia Bonilla, a business technology administration sophomore, grinned and nodded—the addresses for her own recipes come from El Salvador and Maryland. Bonilla joined other UMBC students earlier this fall for the “More than Pupusas” cooking demonstration, sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities, to learn how to cook Salvadoran street food.

Bonilla sat at one of two tables set with brown butcher paper with her classmates, Stephania Fonseca, a social work sophomore, and Jeffrey Molina Soriano, a computer science junior. They also have roots in Maryland and El Salvador. “Pastelitos [pah-steh-lee-tos] means little pie and it’s the Salvadoran version of empanadas [em-pah-nah-dahs],” said Vasquez. “Empanadas are well known all over Latin America. Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans make meat pies, too.”

You can read more on the UMBC Magazine website: https://umbc.edu/stories/teaching-pupusas/