Caribbean’s Top Food Influencer, Natasha Laggan Shares Her Love Of Trini Food With The World

“I’m likely to consider not to cry!” Natasha Laggan smiles at me from the reverse close of a Zoom display. Heart at any time-existing on the sleeve of her red shirt, her hair up in a simple clip… Powering her are workmen carrying out upkeep and she tells me that she has promised to feed them some doubles, a Trinidadian road food stuff designed of dough and curried chickpeas or channa, when they are done… This is the established of Trini Cooking with Natasha and it is also the kitchen in which her relatives breaks bread each night time.

But regardless of web hosting the Caribbean’s most well-liked on the net cooking exhibit, boasting 1.1 million Facebook followers and 242 thousand subscribers on YouTube— and counting— creating her the range one foods influencer in the Caribbean, Natasha Laggan is the humblest of men and women. She is basically a lady from Couva Trinidad with an insatiable hunger for cooking, and an unwavering love for her followers, her country… and her food.

But this tale begins prolonged right before cooking reveals had been even a thing— additional than 6000 years before the arrival of Columbus to Trinidad and Tobago.

Trini food stuff is a melting pot of South Asian, African, Amerindian, European, Chinese, American, Latin American and Arab cuisines… Corn pastelles or farines have been released by Trinidad’s indigenous Amerindians ‘one-pot’ medleys this sort of as pelau, callaloo and oil down had been brought to the New Earth by enslaved Africans curries, aloo pies, rotis and doubles arrived more than with laborers from India, and sweet n sour pork, fried rice and chow mein built their way about with Chinese indentured servants…

These localized dishes are the product or service of a prosperous multicultural history and Natasha immerses herself in all the multifaceted flavors, textures, and smells.

Born in Trinidad to an Indo-Caribbean family members that consisted of seasoned cooks, home economics academics and restaurateurs, a person can just about say that a career in food items was Natasha’s birthright.

“I grew up in food,” she laughs.

A person of Natasha’s most cherished reminiscences from childhood was her time used in the kitchen with “Mama,” her paternal grandmother who passed absent when she was a teen.

“I can still taste her pumpkin and rice,” she states, tears coming to her eyes. “And it was just that— pumpkin… and rice. I don’t even fully grasp what she did, but it tasted so superior.”

From as far back as she can keep in mind, Natasha was heavily immersed in her parents’ foods small business. As a kid, she would accompany her mother to the industry to store for contemporary develop and her mother and father made sure that she played a position in the family trade.

“I would wake up at 5am every single early morning to help my mom make sandwiches for the business,” she describes, painting pictures of a young lady in her university uniform serving to her mom in the kitchen area in advance of the crack of dawn. She would also spend most evenings aiding her dad and mom at the spouse and children cafe right up until it shut.

“It was our livelihood, and I knew that,” she suggests.

At Couva Junior Secondary School, Natasha would relish Property Economics lessons, producing lasagna, muffins, and simple meals. This was exactly where she certainly fell in appreciate with the art of cooking.

“At household, I would check out recipes that I learnt, and I would watch Food stuff Community religiously,” she laughs. “I would pretend I had my individual clearly show, and my more youthful sister Nicole was my viewers.”

When she graduated from large college, Natasha would join the loved ones business whole time in the capability of General Supervisor, wherever she would remain for a lot more than 10 a long time.

But as fate and marriage would have it, Natasha would depart Trinidad in 2009 and migrate to Fort Lauderdale Florida. Leaving her parents’ eatery intended she experienced further time on her fingers, and she could last but not least check out cooking— on her individual phrases. She began to compile personalized recipes with the intention of publishing a cookbook. But in excess of time, so many new entries had been extra to her collection that her pay a visit to to the printers retained finding delayed.

“At the stop of this yr, it is my objective for it to be published,” she states, laughing.

From her new property, Natasha also began to assist loved ones and good friends by means of video clip conference in their attempts to generate household cooked Trinidadian meals. It seemed logical that she ought to get started videoing herself generating some simple dishes instead than having to repeat herself more than and more than.

“My first believed was that my loved ones and pals could now pause and rewind and cook dinner at their personal pace,” she remembers.

On October 29, 2015, Natasha would load her really initially recipe to the Trini Cooking With Natasha YouTube site.

“I made the decision that I would movie myself producing my preferred food— cassava pone,” she recollects. Hesitant to be uncovered on digicam, a shy Natasha identified a way to only display her fingers as she shown how to make the dense pudding of sweet cassava, pumpkin and coconut.

“It may be monotonous, but it is value it,” she stated to her little viewers, as she demonstrated how to grate cassava in just the correct way, and although her voice quivered marginally, her dedication to her craft was obvious.

“You are likely to totally like this,” she explained at the close of the 6-minute online video.

She could as well have been talking to herself.

“As I obtained into it and extra additional movies to YouTube, many others outside the house my private circle started to come across me. Persons expressed that they liked that my videos ended up small and sweet,” she clarifies. “There is not a total whole lot of storytelling so if people are in a hurry, they can observe the movie and understand immediately so that they can get it carried out.”

In 2020, through the pandemic, when individuals all around the globe were confined to their residences because of to world movement limitations, Natasha decided to begin earning improved use of her Fb channel and begun sharing previous YouTube content material.

“I just made the decision to flood the web page with videos,” she suggests, shaking her head with an air of disbelief. “That was when every thing took off. I commenced with about 4000 followers and then I started getting like 1000 followers a working day, and then one particular day it obtained to 100,000 and then a million. It just saved adding up. I did not use advertisements or something. I just kept putting up video clips continuously and individuals would share them, and additional folks would start off to comply with.”

Persons ended up household and embracing home cooking, and absolutely everyone was signing up for on-line communities. Folks needed to be comforted and have been craving for a sense of nostalgia. It was the excellent storm. A motion had begun.

As her subsequent grew, businesses began to attain out to Natasha and she would husband or wife with a lot of of the region’s large names this sort of as Karibbean Flavours, Trinidad’s 2nd greatest spice enterprise, and American model, Major Environmentally friendly Egg. 

Her viewer foundation would also grow to consist of global audiences in addition to Caribbean viewers equally at residence and in the diaspora, all from a range of walks of lifestyle.

“I am making a feeling of comfort and property in persons,” she says, of the feeling of nostalgia that can be sparked by food.

A popular article like her recipe for Seafood boil can have hundreds of 1000’s of views, and a standard online video, like her recipe for Dhal Dumpling soup, can have 1000’s of likes and shares. Hundreds of remarks can follow from a one 5-minute movie, ranging from simple concerns about products or procedure, to others that share own tales and recollections, this sort of as how a grandmother’s recipe may have resembled or differed from hers.

And then there are the 1000’s of non-public and general public letters of appreciation from these who have set up enterprises applying Natasha’s recipes or from all those who have been ready to rekindle family legacies of Trinidadian cooking that might have or else gotten dropped.

“Thank you,” states one particular viewer in response to a basic recipe for garlic sauce. “I really like garlic sauce, but in no way recognized it can be so straightforward to make.” This form of remark, to Natasha, indicates she has done her task.

Natasha has in excess of just one million old close friends who share in her love for Trini delicacies, and to her they are all like household. She tries to use substances that are quick to obtain and economical and if they could not be available, she will present a substitute.

“What is most important is that it have to taste really, truly superior,” she suggests. “There ought to be a ton of taste and even if it is a complex recipe, I want it to be easy to execute.”

“Her move-by-phase directions are basic and so easy to observe,” claims a reader in Facebook’s online evaluations. “Great inspiration to have with me in my kitchen area. I have learnt so significantly and have attained assurance in incorporating new twists to recipes.”

Natasha Laggan is unapologetically Trinibagonian with an uncompromising devotion to community traditions, flavors, and seasonings this kind of as pimento peppers which she states provide “that Trini flavor” to her food. She celebrates the tolerance essential to unlock the distinctive flavors of the location, sautéing contemporary garlic and onions prior to they are added to a recipe, in its place of working with powders, and embraces the Indo-Caribbean flavors produced by methi (fenugreek), geera (cumin) and roucou (seasoning from the seeds of the achiote tree).

“I want people to know about our meals. I want people today to flavor our foodstuff. I want people to say, oh it is so effortless to make,” suggests Natasha about indigenous Trinidadian food items.

And if there is anything at all that Natasha enjoys just as considerably as the act of cooking foods, it is the joy of taking in it.

She lately made a section named Style of D Town, where by she showcases cities, dining establishments and tiny mom and pop stores with a concentration on food items and hopes to ultimately have her have exhibit on Food stuff Network or the Cooking Channel, the place she can enable spread the phrase about Trinibagonian delicacies and culture.

Natasha Laggan is not only a wonderful chef, but she also has coronary heart, soul and a deep appreciate for loved ones, her viewers, and her place.

“I assume people today like me simply because I’m just me. I am not scripted, and I still discuss like a Trinidadian,” she suggests. “I’m a mom, a wife, an influencer and an educator who is focused to making people today pleased. For me achievement is getting able to harmony your desires and your aims even though nevertheless owning a pleased spouse and children existence. I just want to be able to do it all. But I under no circumstances want to end currently being humble.”