From its jungles to its deserts: the world's newly-crowned greatest feminine chef, Leonor Espinosa, attracts her inspiration from Colombia's huge biodiversity and painful historical past.
"My delicacies tastes of relegated cultures, of forgotten areas, it tastes of ancestral methods, of smoke... of ache," mentioned the 59-year-old after she was voted World's Finest Feminine Chef 2022 by the distinguished UK foods and drinks consultancy William Reed, which elects The World's 50 Finest Eating places.
"It additionally tastes of pleasure, of plantain, of cassava, of the soil after it rains, of a desert ecosystem. There may be a whole lot of poetry in my kitchen."
A style for social change
She shouldn't be solely a cook dinner but additionally an activist, having travelled to all corners of her motherland to check indigenous delicacies and provides a voice to individuals who really feel deserted in areas blighted by poverty and a long time of violence.
In naming Espinosa its winner, the 50 Finest panel described her as a "multi-talented Colombian chef marrying artwork, politics and gastronomy."
Her restaurant named 'Leo' in Colombia's capital metropolis, Bogota, showcases flavours from throughout the nation, notably from Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.
"She has cast a novel, cerebral and profound cooking fashion that units her aside from her contemporaries, similtaneously she seeks to make use of gastronomy as a device of socio-economic growth," mentioned the 50 Finest Eating places panel.
Self taught prodigy
Espinosa grew up in Cartagena on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and taught herself methods to cook dinner.
She studied economics and humanities and labored in promoting earlier than making the leap to the kitchen on the age of 35.
In 2017, she was was named Latin America's greatest feminine chef.
To offer her restaurant its trademark native-infused menu, she has criss-crossed throughout Colombia to doc its culinary historical past.
She incorporates many conventional components into her repertoire - all the pieces from unique fruits and Andean tubers to ants and larvae.
The world of haute delicacies has all the time been a largely male-dominated trade however Espinosa has change into a world reference for different aspiring feminine cooks to look as much as.
She hopes to proceed utilizing her cooking to advertise the socio-economic growth of Colombia’s most impoverished areas.
Try the video above to see Espinosa's culinary abilities in motion
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