Latinos Newly Open to Cooking From a Can

What started in Falls Church as charity turned into mystery and ended in a savory lesson for everyone.

Social workers connected with a free-food program at Bailey's Elementary School couldn't understand why some donations gathered dust on the pantry shelf. They couldn't give them away -- beans, corn, soup, beets, greens, hearts of palm, coconut milk.

Patricia Moreno, a health promotion consultant, shook her head. What was going on? Then it hit her. Of course! The unwanted food came in cans.

Moreno, who emigrated from Colombia decades ago, knows her fellow Latinos. "We are not used to cooking with canned food," she says. "We do not know how to cook with it. . . . There was a pantry full of food not being taken because people don't know how to use it!"

In many Latin American countries, canned food is considered a luxury. Families are more accustomed to buying fresh food from the market or harvesting it fresh from their own fields.

In this country, canned food is cheap, albeit processed and loaded with salt. More to the point, cans of food are commonly given away to food drives.

Latino families at Bailey's are among the chief beneficiaries of such drives. Nearly half the students at the school are Latino, and more than half the students qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches.

Which brings us to the Bailey's cafeteria Monday afternoon, for a cooking class. Two professional chefs in white coats are standing behind an array of canned goods, speaking in Spanish to an audience of about 20 parents and 30 children. Univision should pick this up for a new cooking show called "Tin Chefs."

"We Latinos like to eat well," chef Javier Quiroga jokes, patting his belly. "It's not necessary to lose the Latin flavor, which is very important. But we can use what is donated here. . . . We're going to learn how to use cans."

Quiroga, born in Bolivia and owner of To Your Taste Catering in Vienna, is more used to provisioning fancy parties with freshly prepared Latino-accented feasts. But several months ago Moreno asked him if he could work with cans.

Quiroga accepted the challenge. This is the second in a quarterly series of classes at Bailey's, co-sponsored by Anthem HealthKeepers, a Medicaid program in Northern Virginia, and by Inova Health System's community health division.

"Where is everybody from?" Quiroga asks the audience members. They're from you name it: Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Honduras. To round it off, Quiroga's executive chef, German Chavez, who is helping to cook today, is from Nicaragua.