Codex Asado

When I was growing up in Argentina, my grandmother told me stories about a girl named Luisa. This naughty child had helmet hair with bangs and a crooked smile that twisted up into a grimace whenever anyone offered her a new dish to try; she was the pickiest of eaters. Years later it dawned on me that Luisa and I had a few things in common. We shared the first letter of our names, the limp hair, and even that peculiar gesture: I, too, would turn my mouth away from suspicious fare. I never had much appetite for my grandmother’s culinary experiments, but with each account of Luisa’s antics, my hunger for her tales grew.

After my husband and I emigrated to Canada, I discovered real hunger was best sated by Argentine cuisine. Whenever the scent of empanadas, milanesas, and asado filled the house, the stories about people back home would flow. Gradually the feeling of geographic distance...