Social media chef shares journey as a cook, mom

♪ Hey, hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey, hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey, hey (upbeat music) - Good evening, and welcome to "Horizonte," a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

Tonight we delve into one of the most important aspects of Hispanic culture, food and cooking.

I will talk to Belqui Ortiz-Millili, a home chef and food blogger raised in the Dominican Republic and New York, now living here in Arizona.

She'll join me to talk about what else she's deeply passionate about.

But first, here's Belqui with one of her recipes.

- Hello, and welcome back to "Belqui's Twist."

Today I am sharing with you my easy Latin style whole roasted chicken.

We have a whole chicken here, and one of the great things about butterflying, which is what we're gonna do right now, is that the chicken cooks so fast.

Oh, it's crazy.

I have the oven at 500 right now, and I'm gonna go ahead and take the spine from this chicken.

Actually, maybe I'll start right in this side.

And you'll see it's a little tough to do.

Put a little bit of force in there.

And of course, be careful that you don't cut yourself.

Make sure you use very sharp kitchen shears, and you'll be fine.

We're gonna go ahead and season the bird.

I'm so excited.

I'm gonna go and add olive oil into a bowl, adobo.

And I'm not gonna do the whole entire thing.

I'm gonna leave about one tablespoon of it.

Oregano.

Cilantro y achiote.

(laughs) Paprika.

Sounds good, right?

Garlic powder.

Pepper.

And salt.

So now all of them are just waiting for me to just put them and mix them together.

Look how beautiful the color is.

(laughs) You know I love to cook when I'm like, "Amazing, magical."

So here you go.

This chicken is basically ready to go in the oven, of course.

And because we butterflied it, it's gonna cook so much faster.

This one is about five and a half pounds, so I'm giving it about 45 minutes at 500.

And if you see that it's burning for any reason, just lower it to maybe 425, if you think it's too much, right?

So then go ahead, anything that's left over that's from the mixture, just go ahead and just put it up top.

Make sure you get every little crevice, every little bit.

And that's it, we're ready to go.

We're gonna put this baby in the oven.

- And with me now is Belqui Ortiz-Millili of the Belqui's Twist website.

It is so good to see you.

That looked delicious.

- Oh, and it was.

It was amazing, amazing.

Thank you for having me.

- [Catherine] Thank you for being here.

You make it all look so easy and you wear so many hats.

You are a Latina home cook, food blogger, author, autism mom and advocate.

We're gonna talk about that a little later on.

But first, I wanna talk about this incredible collection of these home cooked recipes that you have on your website, on YouTube, all over the place.

Very popular.

When did you develop this love of cooking?

- Well, I've always cooked.

I started cooking at 12 years old because my parents were immigrants from Dominican, and in New York City, they had to take the train long commutes.

So I would just help my mom get things ready.

So I started at 12 and loved just Dominican food to help and cook that.

But then later, after my son with autism was born, I had to quit my job and I had to stay home.

So one of the things was I used to have a lot of therapists come to the house, and then I would just not wanna be in the way, right?

So then I would just start cooking something.

Next thing you know, I'm taking all these recipes and twisting them.

I would put this in it, I would put that in it, and then next thing you know, I'm sending them home with food.

And yeah, so it started that way.

And then family members were like, "Well, what was in that, that thing you cooked that one day?"

And then I'm like, "Okay, let me just write it down for you."

Eventually I started a website just for the family and I even did a little book just for the family.

- [Catherine] And it's really taken off.

- Yeah, and then everything just slowly fell into place, and to me, I'm still starting.

- [Catherine] Well, no, because a lot of people have found you on social media, including myself.

You call yourself on social media Belqui's Twist, and that is because, like you mentioned, you put this unique Latin flavor or Latin twist on some of these recipes.

As I mentioned in the intro, you grew up in New York and also Dominican Republic.

How would you describe the flavors of Dominican food?

- Well, Dominican food, a lot of people that are not Latin or Latin Caribbean think that Dominican food is spicy.

It's not spicy, it just has a lot of flavor.

So when you're eating it, you're just...

I can't explain it other than you take a bite of, let's say pollo guisado, which is our stewed chicken, you take a bite of that in the sauce, and it's just like your taste buds just flourish.

It's unbelievable.

(laughs) You taste the adobo really, and the oregano and cilantro as well.

So we put a lot of ingredients in our food, and that's why it tastes so good.

- Next time you're gonna bring a dish, next time.

- No problem.

I'll make it for you.

I'll bring it and you're gonna love it.

And then you're gonna be calling me all the time.

- Well, I will indeed.

And a lot of people have found your recipes very popular, very exciting, and somewhat easy to make.

And I say somewhat because like me, I'm not a cook.

But you are featured in a couple of books.

The first is "Familia Cookbook," which you have right there.

This is a celebration of Latin home cooking with dishes from 20 Latin countries.

I mean, this is huge.

How did that come about?

- Well, these are my friends, and I met them when they were starting out too.

They have a website, so they were starting out the website, and then I met them through a friend.

And they were like, "Hey, do you want to collab?"

And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, fine."

And then I started collaborating with them for recipes on the website.

And of course, the natural progression.

Lt's make a book.

And then they're like, "Do you wanna be in the book?"

Well, I'm like, "Yeah, let's go, let's do it."

And like everything, it just happened.

And the book is amazing.

Everyone should really give it a try because the recipes in there, imagine all these different countries.

It's just a nugget of gold throughout the whole book.

- [Catherine] Well, the book is fabulous, and I do encourage everyone to get it.

You also are featured in another book, and I wanna show you this because cooking is not your only passion.

This book is called "For the Love of Autism."

And you are in this book as a contributor because you are very passionate about being an advocate and educator for autism.

You are the mom of a child with autism, Connor, who is now 13 years old, almost 14.

- [Belqui] Almost 14.

- Yeah, so tell me about... Because I read your contribution, your essay, if you will, in the book, and it's so deeply raw, and you really talk about the journey that you and your family have taken with Connor, and it's not an easy one.

Tell me about what made you decide to be so vulnerable in this book.

- Well, I feel that people don't necessarily understand when a family has a child with a disability, whether it's autism, cerebral palsy, whatever it is.

And when I was approached to do it, I took the opportunity to explain my experience.

But for example, my son was a twin, and that's a whole other book that you can write because I had fertility issues.

And his sister passed away, and he survived and had a lot of issues with his health.

The first year and a half was really, really difficult.

But we got through it, and as he was starting to develop, he started changing.

We noticed he stopped waving, things like that.

And he could have had autism even if he was a typical born child.

You never know, right?

But this was when we discovered, okay, we have to do something.

But instead of me sitting down and crying and being upset, I decided I'm going to do something about it.

I'm fighting with the doctors.

He has autism.

And they're like, "No, he's just developmentally late."

And I'm like, "No!"

And they're like, "What mother wants their kid to have autism?"

And I'm like, "No, I wanna get him the help he needs."

And a lot of parents sometimes don't fight hard enough.

They listen to the doctors.

The doctors are human.

They make mistakes.

So until I got the diagnosis, I kept fighting for it.

And then decided later on, because the way that I was able to handle the situation, I felt that I could help other moms.

So then I got a certification as a life coach to help other moms.

And that was helping for free because it's so expensive to do anything, especially that's not covered by insurance.

So we would do three-month coaching sessions, and then they would just check in, SOS, I need you.

And it just... Now I don't do it because it's a lot to take on somebody else, and that's my personality.

- [Catherine] Well, and you mention in the book that Connor was 18 years old when you finally went to your pediatrician and said you suspected autism.

Tell me a little bit about, if you can, autism and the Latino community in particular.

Is there enough awareness and education out there about autism and autism support?

- [Belqui] There is.

The problem is that they don't know how to go and get it where it's at.

So when I was living on the East Coast, I used to do symposiums and talks and all of that with parents, with professionals in the autism community.

And almost always the Latinos would be like, "Well, they'll grow out of it.

They're fine."

And then by the time they got to the point where, okay, now we really do need help, they have missed so many opportunities because the brain obviously has developed.

So they're just behind, super behind.

And Latino community also is more home remedies and things like that.

So that hinders us.

- Yes.

- So that's what I've noticed since being a special needs mom.

- [Catherine] Well, you have written in the book, as I said, so eloquently about your journey.

And you talk about some of what you deal with on a daily basis, but there's also the mental health of it for a caretaker.

So how can we, as a community, support families with autism?

And where do you see the future?

- When it comes to supporting, let's say a caretaker, it's more about being there for them.

Sometimes we might be smiling and happy and go lucky, but really inside we're stressed out.

We just, oh, the anxiety is killing us.

Be there for us.

And if for any reason you invite us to a party, and I say no, I can't go because of my son or whatever, don't be upset about it.

Understand.

You can't say, "Well, don't worry, we'll help you."

That doesn't go.

That doesn't fly because while you're there, you're stressed out that your child is going to behave a certain way, it's gonna do something.

So people just need to understand that not only they wanna communicate with us and help us through this, but also understand when we say we can't do something, don't alienate us eventually because we have to say no so many times.

We wanna hang out with you.

It's just that we can't.

- Yes.

Well, there's so much to learn and there's so much to advocate and educate for.

So I thank you for doing that and for sharing a little bit of your journey with us, and of course, your cooking.

And I wanna remind people that they can find you on social media.

Of course, your cooking recipes where you're actually demonstrating is on YouTube.

It's Belqui's Twist.

And also on Instagram, your Belqui's Twist.

And what I love about your Instagram is you have all these great recipes and you're cooking and demonstrating, but you also have videos of Connor and some of his daily victories, which I think is just very special.

- [Belqui] Every little thing is huge.

- It really is, and it's just beautiful that you share that part of your family and your story with us.

So thank you.

It's been a pleasure having you.

- Thank you, it was fun.

- Yes, good to to see you.

- Thank you so much.

Good to see you too.

- Thank you.

And that's our show for tonight.

For "Horizonte" and Arizona PBS, I'm Catherine Anaya.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Have a great night.

♪ Hey, hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey, hey ♪ Hey ♪ Hey, hey