Social networks have become a recipe book accessible to everyone, something like a virtual cookbook with infinite pages. But some accounts have managed to capture the attention of a greater number of users. This is the case of @tasty_hunting, the Instagram profile managed by Colombian Oriana Severino and which accumulates more than a million followers. Although she graduated in Advertising and Marketing, this influencer based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has been linked to cooking since childhood. She knew that she liked this world since when she was five years old she cooked a tomato sauce with her father. "It was a recipe from my grandfather, who was born in Italy, and that's when it clicked. I remember the aromas, it was an experience that marked me."
His parents ran an Italian trattoria and had an artisanal pasta factory in Colombia. "I loved being in the restaurant and in the factory. I would steal little pieces of uncooked pasta and eat them secretly," she explains. He did not think about dedicating himself to it until he was 22 years old, when he was already living in Spain, and he opened an establishment with his family to which he dedicated ten years of his life. The influencer career began later, almost accidentally. "A friend and I opened an Instagram profile to recommend the restaurants we tried and, since we weren't always going to eat out, we alternated this content with recipes." The pandemic arrived and the hospitality industry closed. It was then that he focused on showing his followers how to cook in a healthy and simple way.
Since the beginning of 2021, Severino's recipe account has been a success and that has led her to publish her first book, Healthy and Uncomplicated Cooking (Planet), "because social networks are sometimes a little frivolous and a book invites consult it and cook more calmly". As on Instagram, she proposes easy and balanced dishes based on fresh foods that do not require much time. "Preparing a healthy and cheap fast food is possible, but it is essential to organize and fill the pantry with fruits, vegetables, legumes, meats and fish. There is no need to resort to special ingredients." One of her favorite products is zucchini, "a very tasty vegetable with which you can prepare multiple dishes, such as rolls, omelettes and spaghetti. Vegetables are not boring," she insists.
Another idea that this influencer wants to deny is that eating healthy is expensive. "Ultra-processed foods can cost you up to three times more than fresh foods," she says. And although she admits that there are some healthy products such as olive oil that have become very expensive due to inflation, she believes it is advisable to make an effort and keep them in the pantry. "It's called liquid gold for a reason, so it's interesting to give it priority. Whenever you can, of course."
The large presence of vegetables in Severino's preparations is also explained because two years ago he was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. The doctor recommended reducing his gluten intake and "I realized how complicated it was to follow a celiac diet." Vegetables, since they do not contain gluten, gained prominence in his dishes and, at the same time, became the center of the content that he published on social networks.
Below, we share three recipes from her new book, which is divided into salads, crisps, omelettes, wraps, meats, pastas, snacks and desserts:
