After a much needed holiday, I’m back in Business.
Last week I started  the 2010 Pan-Latino cooking series at IQliving and at the LCBO.
Happy to report the two first classes were sold out.
It’s great to see how much interest on Latin cuisine has grown no just in Toronto, but all over Canada as well.
It has been [...]

This year’s event was all about ‘world cuisine’ using local and
organic products.
It was an honor for me and my crew, to have been invited to the
picnic, thanks to the event organizers decision to recognize cultural and
ethnic groups from around the world that make Toronto home.
Connecting the global palate using foods grown locally is a great
opportunity [...]

I met Mary Luz Mejia last year when she and I were asked to judge some dishes in a Latino culinary competition. Mary Luz is a Colombian-Canadian food journalist and Gemini-nominated TV writer, producer and director. One of her impressive credits is At the Table With ….. Each episode is a biography of a  well-known [...]

I was reading an article in the NY Times about biblio-burros, donkeys that carry a library through the Columbian jungle. Luis Soriano is the teacher who has been bringing education and hope through the books he shepperds with his five trusty burros for the last 10 years.
Luis believes that doing so he is helping to [...]

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 unlikely [...]

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 long [...]

When I got a call back in April to participate in a CBC TV show test the nation , I had no idea I would be on a sound stage with celebrity guests; Jully Black. Kari Matchett, Mitsou, Ed Robertson, Emanuel Sandhu and Tommy Chong and our host Wendy Mesley and Brent Bambury. Which will [...]

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.
I worked [...]

Celebrating my 10th year of involvement with Toronto Taste for Second Harvest, I teamed up with a great entrepreneurial team — Esther Benaim and Maggie McKeown of Great Cooks on Eight. We had a great time putting out stuffed dates with blue cheese and wrap with prosciutto di parma and catching up with fellow [...]