Felicity Jaime, known as Chef Bruja, is a Bronx culinary legend. The Co-Op city native has been cooking all her life, but when she started making dinner for large groups, she knew she had a talent that could last.
"I started doing like private dinners, doing corporate catering, things like that. And I was like, 'Oh, maybe this is something that I can do, like for real,'" said Chef Bruja.
Once the pandemic hit, Chef Bruja turned to social media. She started posting cooking videos online, and now she has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. She said social media allowed her to expand her audience beyond the Bronx and New York and reach people from all over the world.
She said it's not just about the food, but about where she came from and who she cooks for.
"I'm just a little girl from the Bronx. I didn't have much. So now that I have more and I can do more, I want to do more and bring back to my community," she says.
Chef Bruja released her first cookbook called "Tales of the Bronx." The book has 45 recipes, ranging from classic New York dishes, like the chopped cheese to Hispanic dishes, like Puerto Rican Stew Chicken
"Coming from the Bronx, Being a Afro-Latina, we're missing a lot of community books, whereas like we want to know those old recipes that grandma used to make that we're not going to get on the internet. So I feel like I'm that for our younger generation and it's really cultivating," said Chef Bruja.
Click
here to check out "Tales of the Bronx."