Caribbeans Top Food Influencer, Natasha Laggan Shares Her Love Of Trini Food With The World – Forbes

Im going to try not to cry! Natasha Laggan smiles at me from the opposite end of a Zoom screen. Heart ever-present on the sleeve of her red shirt, her hair up in a simple clip Behind her are workmen doing maintenance and she tells me that she has promised to feed them some doubles, a Trinidadian street food made of dough and curried chickpeas or channa, when they are done This is the set of Trini Cooking with Natasha and it is also the kitchen in which her family breaks bread every night.

But despite hosting the Caribbeans most popular online cooking show, boasting 1.1 million Facebook followers and 242 thousand subscribers on YouTube and counting making her the number one food influencer in the Caribbean, Natasha Laggan is the humblest of people. She is simply a girl from Couva Trinidad with an insatiable appetite for cooking, and an unwavering love for her fans, her country and her food.

But this story begins long before cooking shows were even a thing more than 6000 years before the arrival of Columbus to Trinidad and Tobago.

Trini food is a melting pot of South Asian, African, Amerindian, European, Chinese, American, Latin American and Arab cuisines Corn pastelles or farines were introduced by Trinidads native Amerindians; one-pot medleys such as pelau, callaloo and oil down were brought to the New World by enslaved Africans; curries, aloo pies, rotis and doubles came over with laborers from India, and sweet n sour pork, fried rice and chow mein made their way over with Chinese indentured servants

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

Natasha Laggan, in the kitchen

Born in Trinidad to an Indo-Caribbean family that consisted of seasoned cooks, home economics teachers and restaurateurs, one can almost say that a profession in food was Natashas birthright.

I grew up in food, she laughs.

One of Natashas most cherished memories from childhood was her time spent in the kitchen with Mama, her paternal grandmother who passed away when she was a teen.

I can still taste her pumpkin and rice, she says, tears coming to her eyes. And it was just that pumpkin and rice. I dont even understand what she did, but it tasted so good.

From as far back as she can remember, Natasha was heavily immersed in her parents food business. As a child, she would accompany her mother to the market to shop for fresh produce and her parents made sure that she played a role in the family trade.

I would wake up at 5am every morning to help my mother make sandwiches for the business, she explains, painting images of a young girl in her school uniform helping her mother in the kitchen before the crack of dawn. She would also spend most evenings helping her parents at the family restaurant until it closed.

It was our livelihood, and I knew that, she says.

At Couva Junior Secondary School, Natasha would relish Home Economics classes, making lasagna, muffins, and simple meals. This was where she truly fell in love with the art of cooking.

At home, I would try recipes that I learnt, and I would watch Food Network religiously, she laughs. I would pretend I had my own show, and my younger sister Nicole was my audience.

When she graduated from high school, Natasha would join the family business full time in the capacity of General Manager, where she would remain for more than ten years.

But as fate and marriage would have it, Natasha would leave Trinidad in 2009 and migrate to Fort Lauderdale Florida. Leaving her parents eatery meant she had extra time on her hands, and she could finally explore cooking on her own terms. She began to compile personal recipes with the intention of publishing a cookbook. But over time, so many new entries had been added to her collection that her visit to the printers kept getting delayed.

At the end of this year, it is my goal for it to be published, she says, laughing.

From her new home, Natasha also began to support family and friends via video conference in their efforts to create home cooked Trinidadian meals. It seemed logical that she should begin videoing herself making some basic dishes rather than having to repeat herself over and over.

My initial thought was that my family and friends could now pause and rewind and cook at their own speed, she recalls.

On October 29, 2015, Natasha would load her very first recipe to the Trini Cooking With Natasha YouTube page.

I decided that I would video myself making my favorite food cassava pone, she recalls. Hesitant to be exposed on camera, a shy Natasha found a way to only show her hands as she demonstrated how to make the dense pudding of sweet cassava, pumpkin and coconut.

It might be tedious, but its worth it, she said to her small audience, as she demonstrated how to grate cassava in just the right way, and although her voice quivered slightly, her commitment to her craft was clear.

You are going to absolutely love this, she said at the end of the 6-minute video.

She might as well have been speaking to herself.

As I got into it and added more videos to YouTube, others outside my personal circle began to find me. People expressed that they liked that my videos were short and sweet, she explains. There is not a whole lot of storytelling so if people are in a hurry, they can watch the video and learn quickly so that they can get it done.

In 2020, during the pandemic, when people all over the world were confined to their homes due to global movement restrictions, Natasha decided to begin making better use of her Facebook channel and started sharing old YouTube content.

I just decided to flood the page with videos, she says, shaking her head with an air of disbelief. That was when everything took off. I started with about 4000 followers and then I began getting like 1000 followers a day, and then one day it got to 100,000 and then a million. It just kept adding up. I didnt use ads or anything. I just kept posting videos constantly and people would share them, and more people would start to follow.

People were home and embracing home cooking, and everyone was joining online communities. People needed to be comforted and were yearning for a sense of nostalgia. It was the perfect storm. A movement had begun.

Natasha Laggan, filming Trini Cooking with Natasha (Photo by videographer, Brandon Woods)

As her following grew, companies began to reach out to Natasha and she would partner with many of the regions big names such as Karibbean Flavours, Trinidads second largest spice company, and American brand, Big Green Egg.

Her viewer base would also grow to include international audiences in addition to Caribbean viewers both at home and in the diaspora, all from a variety of walks of life.

I am creating a sense of comfort and home in people, she says, of the sense of nostalgia that can be sparked by food.

A popular post like her recipe for Seafood boil can have hundreds of thousands of views, and a typical video, like her recipe for Dhal Dumpling soup, can have thousands of likes and shares. Hundreds of comments can follow from a single 5-minute video, ranging from basic questions about equipment or technique, to others that share personal stories and recollections, such as how a grandmothers recipe might have resembled or differed from hers.

And then there are the thousands of private and public letters of appreciation from those who have set up businesses using Natashas recipes or from those who have been able to rekindle family legacies of Trinidadian cooking that might have otherwise gotten lost.

Thank you, says one viewer in response to a simple recipe for garlic sauce. I love garlic sauce, but never realized it's so easy to make. This kind of comment, to Natasha, means she has done her job.

Natasha has over one million old friends who share in her love for Trini cuisine, and to her they are all like family. She tries to use ingredients that are easy to find and affordable and if they might not be accessible, she will offer a substitute.

What is most important is that it must taste really, really good, she says. There must be a lot of flavor and even if it is a complicated recipe, I want it to be easy to execute.

Her step-by-step instructions are simple and so easy to follow, says a reader in Facebooks online reviews. Great inspiration to have with me in my kitchen.I have learnt so much and have gained confidence in adding new twists to recipes.

Natasha Laggan is unapologetically Trinibagonian with an uncompromising devotion to local traditions, flavors, and seasonings such as pimento peppers which she says bring that Trini flavor to her food. She celebrates the patience required to unlock the distinct flavors of the region, sauting fresh garlic and onions before they are added to a recipe, instead of using powders, and embraces the Indo-Caribbean flavors created by methi (fenugreek), geera (cumin) and roucou (seasoning from the seeds of the achiote tree).

I want people to know about our food. I want people to taste our food. I want people to say, oh its so easy to make, says Natasha about indigenous Trinidadian food.

And if there is anything that Natasha loves just as much as the act of cooking food, it is the joy of eating it.

She recently developed a segment called Taste of D Town, where she showcases cities, restaurants and small mom and pop shops with a focus on food and hopes to eventually have her own show on Food Network or the Cooking Channel, where she can help spread the word about Trinibagonian cuisine and culture.

Natasha Laggan is not only a great chef, but she also has heart, soul and a deep love for family, her viewers, and her country.

I think people like me because Im just me. I am not scripted, and I still speak like a Trinidadian, she says. Im a mother, a wife, an influencer and an educator who is dedicated to making people happy. For me success is being able to balance your dreams and your goals while still having a happy family life. I just want to be able to do it all. But I never want to stop being humble.

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Caribbeans Top Food Influencer, Natasha Laggan Shares Her Love Of Trini Food With The World - Forbes