Chef and writer Monti Carlo arrives at The Crawford Thursday night with a cookbook the food world has been waiting for. “Spanglish: Recipes & Stories,” her debut, released this month with a foreword by Gordon Ramsay, is a love letter to Puerto Rican cooking and bicultural identity. She’ll talk through the book with LAist food and culture writer Gab Chabrán and demonstrate one of her signature recipes live onstage, with a savory pre-show snack and a sweet post-show treat thrown in.
Carlo is a two-time Telly Award–winning Puerto Rican food media personality and special events chef. She currently serves as Senior Editor of Food and Dining at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and her television work spans Netflix, Roku, FOX, PBS, Food Network and Tastemade. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she spent much of her youth in Texas, and the cookbook’s title nods to that hybrid life lived between cultures and to her reclamation of a word long used to marginalize Puerto Ricans in the diaspora.
Chabrán, who covers food and culture for LAist, said in an essay accompanying the event that he invited Carlo as a way to dig deeper into a cuisine he considers underrepresented in Southern California. Carlo returns to one dish in particular when she talks about the book, pastelón, a casserole of sweet fried plantain layered with picadillo and cheese.
The conversation is part of Cookbook Live, the LAist series presented in partnership with the James Beard Foundation. Pre-orders of “Spanglish” can be added to tickets, and Now Serving bookseller will sell copies onsite.
Monti Carlo on “Spanglish” will run on Thursday, May 21 at 7 p.m. The Crawford, 474 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (626) 583-5100 or visit laist.com/events.
