EPISODE 1 | Back to Basics: Caribbean Healing at Home
l’ll Cook Like Your Mother created by Chef Santana Caress Benitez provides a full range of freelance chef services (pop-up dining events, private cooking lessons, catering, food-centric event production, recipe development, etc), and now a webisode series. In this first episode, Santana reintroduces us to the basics of Caribbean healing practices using common ingredients we can readily find at the grocery store or in our backyard.
Santana Caress Benitez is a Food Network Chopped champion who received her culinary + culinary management diplomas from The Institute of Culinary Education in New York City and a member of SAG-AFTRA. After interning in the TastingTable test kitchen and working in different restaurants, she decided to branch out on her own as a freelance chef and culinary instructor under l’ll Cook Like Your Mother.
She currently lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico where she cooks and creates content for her web series, I’ll Cook Like Your Mother. She also runs La Clinica de Comida, a free community food and acupuncture/alternative healing program that was directly inspired by the Black Panthers.
Santana can also be seen playing Lourdes “LuLu” Blackmon in both seasons of the Spike Lee directed series, She’s Gotta Have It, which is currently on Netflix.