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Cookbooks

Habana Cafe owner celebrated on world stage

By Times Staff Writer
Published February 23, 2005

Josefa Gonzalez-Hastings, owner of Gulfport's Habana Cafe, is certainly breathing some rarefied air these days.

Her Habana Cafe Cookbook (University Press of Florida; $19.95) was recently named Best Latino Cuisine Book in the World for 2004 at the 10th annual Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Sweden. Also honored were 2004 books by well-known chefs and food writers such as Thomas Keller (Bouchon, Artisan), Harold McGee (On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Scribner), Art Smith (Kitchen Life: Real Food for Real Families - Even Yours, Hyperion) and the editors and writers of the Williams-Sonoma Foods of the World series.

Gonzalez-Hastings, who is commonly called Jo, and her husband, David Hastings, attended the ceremony in Grythyttan, west of Stockholm. A cookbook library there boasts 60,000 books, including one of the world's oldest dating to the 1400s.

The Habana Cafe Cookbook is a celebration of the author's Cuban heritage and the popular restaurant she opened in 1997. The book includes about 125 recipes, including one for Cream Cheese Flan that won Gonzalez-Hastings $10,000 in the Southern Living Cookoff in 2003.

The cookbook will become part of the organization's hall of fame, and Gonzales-Hastings has been invited to sit on an international writers' panel.

The World Cookbook Awards, founded by Edouard Cointreau of the French liqueur family, drew 5,000 entries from 67 countries. Awards are given to cookbooks in many languages, including Japanese, Spanish, French and German.

For more information on the awards or for a complete list of winners: www.cookbookfair.com

[Last modified February 22, 2005, 09:56:04]