Accent on Superfoods
5 QUESTIONS FOR GREENWICH CHEF AND COOKBOOK AUTHOR LETICIA MOREINOS SCHWARTZ
With tiny hands that could barely reach the counter, Leticia Moreinos Schwartz recalls being 6 years old and rolling brigadieros and other treats in her childhood kitchen in Brazil. Once she grew up and could more easily reach the counter, the Greenwich resident and professional chef graduated from the International Culinary Center in New York and penned her culinary passion into a couple of cookbooks.
Herbs and vegetables play a big role in her cooking and she often encourages others to experiment with spices in the kitchen to prepare tasty and healthy food. She described her third and most recent cookbook, “Latin Superfoods,” as a labor of love, inspired by her mission to steer people away from processed and packaged foods and promote healthy eating.
The book, which features 100 healthy and flavorpacked recipes from juices to sweets and nutritional takes on Latin classics will be published on Oct. 15. After flipping through her book, we had some questions about how she makes her healthy recipes so tasty.
TinaMarie Craven: This is the third cookbook you’ve written. How is the new book different from your previous two?
Leticia Moreinos Schwartz: Well, the previous books are a tribute to my home country of Brazil. I think I started on a very exciting journey because while I was working on the books and doing classes regarding the Brazilian books I also got called to be the spokesperson for a healthy living campaign called the American Diabetes Challenge, that put me on a slightly different track. This book is more of an offering of the work I’ve been doing as the spokesperson for a healthy living campaign. For six years, I’ve been working on this campaign and it’s been a phenomenal opportunity for me because I travel the country and I have the opportunity to teach cooking classes and participate in health events and food events. I really have the opportunity to raise awareness about living a healthy lifestyle and that’s when I realized, “wait a second, I have a book right in front of me.”
TC: What was it like participating in the documentary “A Touch of Sugar”?
LMS: It was a fantastic experience, but I have to say it wasn’t so different from my previous work with them because it’s attached to the campaign. It’s about traveling the country and raising awareness on how people can live a healthier lifestyle. We talk to many different communities, especially underserved communities and some Hispanic communities around the country. The thing is I have the chance to see with my own eyes that people are just getting fatter and fatter and sicker and sicker and we don’t realize. I feel that people don’t make the time to cook, they don’t make the time to exercise and people are eating takeout and packaged foods. I think that’s one of the reasons why I wrote this book because I’m trying to bring us back to home cooking and to put pure fuel inside our bodies.
TC: What do you want people to take away from your book?
LMS: I think the goal is really to get people to change their perspective on making time to eat and exercise. I think people have this stigma that they have to go into the kitchen and they have to chop, prep, cook, eat and then clean. The kitchen is the center of the home. There are so many families that are not making good use of their kitchen. Your health destiny can be traced in the kitchen. It’s almost like I want people to treat the kitchen as your health sanctuary. Instead of looking at the kitchen with ‘oh my god I have to prep and cook and clean and eat and dice and chop’ I want people to put an apron on — cooking in your regular clothes and putting on an apron puts you in a different state of mind. Maybe put some music on and see cooking as a way of relaxation. We need to make time to cook. Food is medicine and food can be the answer for a lot more than we realize. Food is love, power, medicine, education, chemistry, math, history, politics, economics, agriculture. Food is really everything.
TC: Do you have any tips for novice cooks or those who feel overwhelmed in the kitchen?
LMS: I think that one of the most important things is to look at your schedule. What I tend to advise when I talk in events and cooking classes is for people to cook on the weekends and freeze meals for the week or even one or two months ahead. For example, I’m not super in favor of frozen foods you buy in the supermarket, but I’m a huge fan of frozen foods that you make yourself. When you cook, I always say you should double or even triple the recipe and freeze a portion.
TC: Do you have a favorite recipe from the new book?
LMS: That’s a tough question, it’s so hard because I love every recipe in this book. I feel that every recipe has a story behind it, which is one of the reasons why I love writing cookbooks because it takes you back to the story and how the recipe unfolds.