Chef Santana - Diaspora Dining

Ingredients:

2 cups AP flour

1 Tbsp white sugar

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

2 Tbsp butter, chilled and cubed

1 cup of coconut milk

CHEF SANTANA

AREPAS DE COCO

Method:

Mix dry ingredients and cut in cold cubes of butter using your fingertips. Mix the butter and dry ingredients until the flour becomes mealy.
Add in coconut milk, little by little until your dough starts to come together. If it is too sticky, add in a little more flour. Knead dough until it is nice and smooth and no longer sticky. Allow it rest.
After the dough has rested, roll it out nice and thin then use a cup or a cookie cutter to shape arepas.
Fry them in 350F oil, flipping them until they are cooked and golden. Serve hot or room temperature.

**ABOUT CHEF SANTANA**
Chef 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, Santana decided to branch out on her own as a freelance chef and culinary instructor under I'll Cook Like Your Mother.
I'll Cook Like Your Mother provides a full range of freelance chef services (pop-up dining events, private cooking lessons, catering, food-centric event production, recipe development, etc).
Santana is currently living 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.

ABOUT DIASPORA DINING

Cooking in the African Diaspora is a practice of social justice--it memorializes our ancestors; grants agency to all who participate; and concretizes the Diaspora’s invaluable contributions to world-wide cuisines. With this intention, we have created a new series, Diaspora Dining, as a way to continue this preservation of our collective heritage.

Through storytelling and step-by-step recipe tutorials, Diaspora Dining follows chefs as they prepare their favorite dishes and demonstrate how you can create these generational recipes at home. Creating magnificent dishes has always been an avenue for us to tell our own stories, and Diaspora Dining is an essential ingredient to safeguarding those legacies.

The African Diaspora continues to influence the world’s cultural landscape, and it’s about time that our cuisine is revered around the world in the same fashion. Now more than ever, we believe it’s the perfect time to protect our cultural traditions, and we can do that from our homes, or better yet, on our stoves. Join us on this delicious quest to advance racial and social justice one dish at a time!

WHEN: Launching on May 1, 2020! Series will run from May to September, 2020.

HOW TO WATCH: CCCADI’s new digital programs and resources will be featured on our different social media platforms. Visit www.cccadi.org and make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and follow us on FB and IG for regular updates!