“We are what we read, I have always said it, but also what we eat, what we cook, talk and hear,” he says. In an interview with Free pressthe poet and narrator shares the journey that led him to write this project that, beyond a gastronomic compilation, is a vital blog. From garlic to Kebab, he reconstructs stories born at the family table, with aromas, flavors and research as memory triggers.
“Eating is an art,” he says at the beginning of conversation. For him, it is not a physiological routine, but a cultural act. “Feeding can be done by anyone, but eating, exploring the sensations, is a magical, wonderful event; a celebration of the other.”
“I learned much more at the table of my parents’ house than in any university I have been in,” he says, convinced that in that space he found his true training.
The Taibo table was a culture classroom. “There not only was he ate: there was imagination, word, music … everything that means culture. Culture is not to give answers, but to generate more difficult questions. And food, without a doubt, does that.”
Describe Spoon and memory It is not simple. The author acknowledges that it is a mixture of chronicle, autobiography, essay and report. “It is a book for curious,” he says, aimed at those who seek to understand gastronomic memory and stories that arise around a dish.
Much of that vision is born in your family environment. In their parents’ house, in addition to eating well, knowledge was shared. His father, Asturian, wrote fundamental texts about food, such as Meeting of two stoveswhere he addresses culinary miscegenation after the Colombian exchange.
Taibo illustrates it with an example: without the Mesoamerican tomato there would be no Italian food. “That gastronomic miscegenation was the best of all. Mexico, Guatemala and other regions put ingredients that changed the world on the table.”
That impulse to tell what happens around the food led him to create blogs and television programs. But he clarifies: “They are not about kitchen, but about food, memories and experiences.”
“It’s very curious, because I sat down to write without knowing where I was going. I started having memories, and the book is made of stories, mentions, loves and, above all, passions. I think eating is an exciting world, where all the possibilities are found,” he says.
Spoon and memoryhe insists, he is not a recipe book, but a book of memoirs, discoveries and research. “It is a book that tries to be as fun as it can result for a lego in the theme of food and kitchen. They are my interior and exterior trips, and all the parts of the world to which I reach and try.”
His most recent book are the memories of his life in the face of food and a space to celebrate life through flavors and memories. (Free Press Photo: Keneth Cruz)
Test, your key mantra
Taibo points out that his father had a magical word that became his mantra: “proof.” That word, he says, represents the principle of all knowledge. “But, in the case of food, it is the best of all.”
Each meal is a sensory adventure. “In front of you they present something indescribable, that you have never seen and that will never know the same.” That impulse to discover led him to write, to try, to narrate.
The secrets of Spoon and memory
When starting the book, he faced a dilemma: the memory is treacherous. That is why he decided to investigate and build an experience that combined memories and culture. He chose a completely arbitrary alphabetical order: he wrote about what he likes, from the A garlic to Kebab’s K. “It is not a gastronomic dictionary, it is a dictionary of emotions. Of my emotions,” he says.
The second volume is already underway. This time he will go from the l of literature to the Z of shoe. Why shoe? Explains it with humor and cinema: in The gold chimeraCharles Chaplin cooks a shoe. That wink allowed him to talk about cinema and food.
The combination of ingredients is another of its explorations. Although he is not a fan of the Güicoy or the broccoli, he acknowledges that, by mixing them with other elements, they can become wonderful. For him, food goes beyond everyday life: “Eating in two different places is never the same,” he says. Therefore, memory plays a fundamental role: flavors activate memories, and smells detonate emotions.
“Nostalgia is longing for past times that everyone says they were better. But I think the present times are better, because you are alive,” he concludes.
Literature and life at the table
The best memories, he insists, are family meals. In them the stories that mark us are born. And where appropriate, also literature: he shared a table with figures such as Juan Rulfo, José Emilio Pacheco or Quino.
Spoon and memory It is not just a book: it is part of your life. They are memories lived with their parents, with their wife or in solitude, and now revive through food