Who Am I

My relatives and hometown friends know me as Manuel. Many friends know me as Manny, but I respond to both!

My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Galicia and Asturias Spain.  So, I grew up in a diverse neighborhood of Spaniards, Cubans, Italians and a smattering of other cultures.  Interest in cooking seriously began at 13 years of age.

My grandparents being from Spain and some of my relatives having married Italians and Cubans, my first dishes were of course from those cuisines.

The beautiful young lady I married is Mexican-American. As a result, I developed those ethnic dishes with the tutelage of my mother-in-law.

There is a lot of Spanish/Cuban and Mexican/American fusion. I learned later that some of the classic dishes from those countries were prepared differently in the US. But, they are still unbelievably delicious. A lot of the old school dishes were considered peasant dishes, but are  now delicacies.

Traveling the world has afforded me the ability to learn a lot about other cuisines and cultures.  Those experiences will be brought to this site. I will also write about more basic information such as cooking tools, techniques, restaurants – all that I have learned from cooking classes, travel and trial and error.