Charcuterie is an ancient art that started nearly 6,000 years ago. The word comes from the French chair cuit, which translates into cooked meat. For me, and many others, charcuterie is the art and science of the pig — butchery, preparation, curing and aging. In a more modern age, this art has been the work [...]

Like food, peliculas are an entrance into understanding a culture. Naturally, as part of how I celebrate Latino culture through food, I’m excited about today’s opening of the 6th annual Toronto International Latin Film Festival, at the Royal Theater on College Street. With films showing the diaspora of the Spanish language, the festival reveals an [...]

Chayote was a major part of what I decided to serve at Feast of Fields this year. It’s a relatively unknown vegetable if you’re not Latino, Caribbean or an adventurous explorer of world foods. Finding organic chayote was a challenge, but luckily Whole Foods had some that was naturally grown, which means it wont be [...]

Growing up in Venezuela to a Colombian mother, I had the best of both cultures. We spent a lot of time in Colombia with my grandparents, and the one thing common to the cuisines of both countries, and at the heart of both cultures, is the arepa, the arepa our daily bread. To call it [...]

From a culinary point of view, the hugely successful Luminato art event did something extra special this year. The organizers decided to celebrate the art of food at the Distillery, and set up what they called The Long Table, One table One city, a 650-foot table for chefs to sell some of their food street-style. [...]

The earliest record of the avocados existence was an archaeological dig in Peru that uncovered avocado pits buried with a mummy in the eighth century BCE. One theory was that the avocado was believed to have aphrodisiac qualities valuable to this culture even in the afterlife. As the story goes, in more recent history, when [...]

A Year for Hidden Treasures Potatoes are serious business. First cultivated by the Incas over 6,000 years ago, potatoes found Europe in the 16th century. Spanish explorers found the potato in its native Andes region, a treasure that would soon spread throughout the globe. Today, the potato produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less [...]