Upon my visit to San Francisco to attend the 5th Annual International Filipino American Book Festival, I had the pleasure to learn about Betty Ann Besa-Quirino's work and her prolific Filipino cookbooks. However, after interviewing her and learning more about her on YourArtsyGirlPodcast, I found Ms. Betty Ann to be even more fascinating than ever that I wanted to keep on talking to her. For as most authors, she does more than writing Filipino cookbooks and food blogs, she is a journalist, creative writer and an artist as well!
Bio: Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino, is a journalist, and a multi-award-winner of the Plaridel Writing Awards and has been a winner of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Awards. She is the author of her newest cookbook “Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food in a Multicooker Pot”. Other cookbooks she has written are: “My Mother’s Philippine Recipes” and “How To Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks”. She is a correspondent for Positively Filipino online magazine; and blogs about Filipino home cooking on her site AsianInAmericaMag.com
Betty Ann, as she is fondly called, was born in the Philippines and raised in Tarlac province where her way of life was molded early on by her parents’ farming and agricultural business. From the time she was a little girl, Betty Ann learned how to cook traditional Philippine dishes from her mother and has transformed these culinary skills to modern day Filipino cooking in her American kitchen. Based in New Jersey, Betty Ann is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP-New York); the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance; the Association of Culinary Historians of the Philippines.
Instant Filipino Recipes Cookbook: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food In a Multicooker Pot. (2018; Amazon.com) – This is perhaps the first Filipino cookbook published in America with recipes for the popular kitchen appliance, the Instant Pot or multicooker. The author has put together 36 traditional Philippine recipes, each with full color photos and shares a faster way to cook these classics without losing the soul of mom’s cooking.
My Mother’s Philippine Recipes (2017; Amazon.com) – The author shares a collection of her mother’s recipes from her childhood, often served to family and friends who stopped by their home in Tarlac. The Besa home was known to locals as “the home along the highway”, a stopover of friends and family enroute to Baguio. Friends relished the multi-course meals her mother prepared with produce ingredients harvested from their farm, expertly grown by her father.
Instagram: @bettyannquirino
Twitter: @bettyannquirino
Pintrest: BettyAnnBesa Quirino
Elizabeth Ann Besa- Quirino
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