Mélange Travel & Lifestyle Magazine October 2017 | Page 119

Chef Jennie Staines was born in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye on May 14, 1968. She is the daughter of Ms.
Elvi, owner of Elvi’s Kitchen, who is well known throughout Belize for her cooking skills and creativity
with local seafood and other ingredients. She adds her own flair, using local, historic recipes with
International Cuisine.
Jennie received training regionally and in the USA with her emphasis being on Mayan and Caribbean
Cuisine. She has participated in several international events, won several local and International Awards
and kept Elvi’s Kitchen as the #1 Seafood Restaurant in Belize.
“
As a little girl I grew up watching my mama Elvia cooking recipes that were
handed down to her - recipes you wouldn’t find in cookbooks or magazines
and certainly not on the internet. She continued our family traditions with
recipes that were passed down to her and she in turn passed them down to
me. Our traditional Maya dishes like a robust relleno or a sweet and tangy
escabeche, laden with pungent onions and native Mayan spices, to name a
few. As a chef, I treasure those recipes and I honor the old ways of Belizean
cooking.
I see myself as a steward, a guardian of those authentic cooking traditions
which I like to call Eclectic Maya. It is just one of the many flavors of
Belize. Instead of using too many European or Eastern spices and herbs, I
make every attempt to use traditional local spices and techniques passed
down from our Mayan ancestors, ingredients such as native oregano and
epasote help to give my dishes a uniquely Belizean flavor. And in place of
conventional meats, I like to include fresh seafood such as shrimp, conch,
stone crab and lobster to give even the most mundane dishes a distinctly
Belizean twist. Coupled with fresh-cut plantains or sweet coconuts, dishes
such as Mole, Pibil and Sere come to life in my kitchen, not because of any
culinary skill I possess, but because I realize that we have something very
special here in Belize. We are tied to the land and to the sea, and our rich
culture and traditions remain largely undiminished. All we have to do is
embrace our natural resources and use them!
I hope that by honoring the past I can combine old and new to create
very special dishes. I hope that I can remind people of this great culinary
tradition that was born in one of the oldest and greatest civilizations the
world has ever known. And I hope that I can, in some small way, use what I
have learned to contribute to my fellow culinary enthusiasts.