The Cooking Diva

Of fritters, ceviche and a woman’s right to cook

By Karina L. Arrue

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Food blogging is a thriving enterprise these days; with over 48,000 blogs in the u.s. dedicated solely to culinary pursuits, these palatable web diaries are changing the way we relate to food. From popular blogs like Chocolate and Zucchini to Gluten-free Girl and Smitten Kitchen, there is bound to be a self-proclaimed foodie on the net, armed with the recipe needed to satisfy your precise hankering—say for an artichoke and goat cheese mille-feuille—at any given moment.

Their growing number leads me to believe that a small culinary miracle occurred when I stumbled upon the Cooking Diva a couple of months ago. I was looking for a recipe for carimañolas, a yucca fritter made in my father’s homeland, when I first came across Chef Melissa De Leon’s charming blog, and I have been a regular visitor since. The 30-something Panama native drew me in with her knowledge of Latin American cuisine, which is a rarity on the Internet—especially in English—despite the food blog boom. While her perspective on cooking is exceedingly cosmopolitan, no doubt a product of many years of living and traveling abroad, her voice is refreshingly warm and lacking the pretension often found in elevated culinary circles.

Aside from being an avid blogger, Chef Melissa wears many other hats. On any given day, she may be cooking up a storm in her experimental kitchen, where she tests new recipes for her latest project, be it hosting a nationally-syndicated cooking show (Life Made Simple in Panama) or writing a weekly column for the weekend section of a national newspaper. When not in her own kitchen, Chef Melissa might be leading visitors on food tours or teaching classes. She also cultivates produce on her own organic farm.

The downside of entering Chef Melissa’s universe is an inability to focus. Her delicacies interrupted me every few keystrokes as I tried to write: That mandioca chocolate cake with coconut milk looks divine. How much would the half a pound of yucca needed to make it cost at the international supermarket? She inspired many a foray into my own kitchen to make amateurish (nay, foolish) attempts to concoct one of her recipes with whatever ingredients I had. Hopefully the Diva’s love of food (and her recipes!) will inspire new cooking exploits in your kitchen, too.