Poetry and cooking were never separate things in Cuba
En Camagüey, la poeta Evelin Queipo Balbuena ha unido dos formas antiguas de transmitir identidad —la décima y la receta— en un solo libro nacido del silencio pandémico. Recetofilia no es simplemente una curiosidad literaria: es un acto de memoria cultural, una afirmación de que lo que cocinamos y lo que cantamos son, en el fondo, el mismo idioma. En tiempos en que la distancia amenaza con borrar los lazos comunes, este libro propone que la herencia se preserva también en el sabor y en el verso.
- Durante el encierro pandémico, la poeta encontró en la escritura una forma de resistencia: unir versos tradicionales con recetas de dulces cubanos fue su manera de mantener vivo el vínculo con su cultura.
- Lo que comenzó como una serie publicada en el periódico Adelante en 2021 generó una respuesta tan amplia entre lectores de todas las edades que la editorial Ácana decidió convertirlo en libro.
- El riesgo de la erosión cultural —el olvido de las tradiciones culinarias y poéticas que definen la identidad cubana— es el adversario silencioso que Recetofilia enfrenta directamente.
- El libro no yuxtapone poesía y cocina, sino que las fusiona: las décimas llevan el sabor de los platos, y las recetas adquieren el peso y la música del verso, formando un objeto literario singular.
- Recetofilia llega como un gesto de lealtad hacia las madres y abuelas cuyas mesas sostuvieron la nación, recordando que la memoria colectiva también se hereda en ingredientes simples y formas antiguas.
Evelin Queipo Balbuena, poeta y ensayista camagüeyana con premios como el José María Heredia en 2020 y el Luis Rogelio Nogueras en 2012, ha publicado un libro que hace algo poco común: fusionar más de treinta décimas —la forma estrófica de diez versos enraizada en la tradición hispanoamericana— con recetas de postres cubanos. El libro se llama Recetofilia, y ha comenzado a convocar lectores de distintas generaciones en su ciudad.
La obra nació durante la pandemia, cuando el aislamiento detuvo la vida en la isla. Queipo Balbuena empezó a escribir como una forma de atravesar ese tiempo detenido, emparejando versos con recetas de dulces elaborados con ingredientes que cualquier hogar cubano podría tener. Publicó las décimas en el periódico Adelante en el verano de 2021, y la respuesta fue tan significativa que lo que había comenzado como un gesto íntimo de resistencia cultural se convirtió en un proyecto editorial. La casa Ácana de Camagüey lo publicó como libro completo.
Lo que distingue a Recetofilia es que no se trata de poemas decorando recetas, ni de instrucciones culinarias interrumpidas por versos. Ambas formas se vuelven inseparables: las décimas portan el sabor y la memoria de los platos, mientras que las recetas adquieren la musicalidad y el peso del poema. Juntas, conforman un tributo literario y gastronómico a la identidad cubana.
Queipo Balbuena ha dedicado su carrera a la escritura y a la educación de niños y jóvenes, resistiendo lo que ella percibe como erosión cultural y alienación humana. Recetofilia es una extensión de ese compromiso: honra a las madres y abuelas cuya cocina definió una nación, y afirma que las recetas heredadas y los versos cantados son, en esencia, dos maneras de decir quiénes somos.
Evelin Queipo Balbuena, a poet and essayist from Camagüey, has written a book that does something unusual: it pairs more than thirty décimas—a traditional ten-line verse form—with recipes for Cuban desserts. The book is called Recetofilia, and it has begun to draw readers across generations in her city, from children to families seeking something that tastes like home.
Queipo Balbuena is not new to recognition. She won the José María Heredia Poetry Prize in 2020 and the Luis Rogelio Nogueras Prize in 2012. She was a finalist for the prestigious Altazor Prize in Peru in 2024. But Recetofilia represents something different from her earlier work—a deliberate fusion of two languages, poetry and cooking, both rooted in Cuban tradition.
The book was born during the pandemic, when isolation pressed down on the island and movement stopped. Queipo Balbuena found herself confined, like everyone else, and she began writing as a way through it. She paired verses with recipes for sweets made from ingredients that any Cuban household might find—fruit from a cart, items from the market. The work became a kind of resistance, a way to keep connection alive when distance was the only rule. She published the décimas in Adelante, the newspaper founded by the Revolution, in its summer section in 2021. The response was strong enough that what started as a pandemic gesture grew into something larger.
The Ácana publishing house in Camagüey decided to bring it out as a full book. What emerges on the page is not simply recipes interrupted by poems, or poems decorated with cooking instructions. Instead, the two forms become inseparable. The décimas carry the flavor and memory of the dishes they describe. The recipes gain the weight and music of verse. Together, they form a single object—a literary and culinary tribute to the essence of what it means to be Cuban.
Queipo Balbuena has spent her career as a writer and educator, working with children and young people, shaping values through language. She is someone who resists what she sees as cultural erosion and human alienation. Recetofilia is an extension of that commitment. It honors the mothers and grandmothers whose cooking defined Cuban identity, whose tables held the nation together. It says, in effect, that the recipes we inherit and the verses we sing are not separate things—they are both ways of saying who we are.
The book arrives at a moment when such gestures matter. It uses the materials at hand—simple ingredients, traditional forms—to create something with genuine artistic weight. It is a work of loyalty, wrapped in the language of both kitchen and verse, offered as a defense against forgetting.
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Why combine poetry and recipes at all? Why not just write about food, or just write poems?
Because in Cuba, they were never separate to begin with. A recipe is a story. A poem is a way of tasting something. When you write a décima about a dessert made from fruit and sugar, you're not decorating one with the other—you're showing they're the same act of memory.
She created this during the pandemic, when people were isolated. Did the confinement change what she was trying to do?
It gave her permission, maybe. Isolation forced her to find new ways to reach people. She couldn't teach in a room. She couldn't gather. So she wrote verses about sweets and published them in the newspaper. It was a way of saying: we're still here, we still have this, we still know how to make these things.
The book uses simple ingredients—things from a market cart. Is that deliberate?
Absolutely. She's not writing about luxury or scarcity. She's writing about what's actually available, what ordinary people actually use. That's where the real culture lives. Not in what's rare or imported, but in what your mother knew how to do with what she had.
You mentioned she resists cultural erosion. What does that mean in this context?
It means she believes that if you don't write down these recipes, if you don't sing them in verse, they disappear. The knowledge dies with the generation that held it. This book is an act of preservation—but not in a museum way. It's alive. You can actually make these desserts.
So reading the book is one thing, but using it is another?
Exactly. It's meant to be used. A poem you read once and close the book. But a recipe you return to. You make it, you taste it, you teach someone else. That's how culture actually survives.