About

I am a professional food stylist, recipe developer, and food writer. My styling aesthetic is versatile; I have a keen eye for the elegant and simple, but also for the raw and the abstract. The goal is to create images with visual and appetite appeal. When it comes to cooking and recipe development, I seek out sensational flavor and look for unique twists on traditional recipes.

I’ve always been fascinated by food. I started clipping food photos from magazines and copying recipes into notebooks when I was seven years old. The food descriptions of authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Jeffrey Steingarten thrilled me more than the most goosebump-inducing mystery novel.

I grew up in Nicaragua and Mexico, and spent some time in Italy before attending Northwestern University, from where I graduated with a degree in Radio/TV/Film. I moved to New York after college and worked at InStyle, Lucky, and Vogue. My eye was further trained to focus on aesthetics and image composition, a skill I apply on set today: I know how to arrange food and props with precision for the camera.

Despite my love of tulle and sequins, I left fashion and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute, which led to a job at Cook’s Country, part of America’s Test Kitchen. There, I developed original recipes, wrote accompanying articles, and worked on the magazine’s PBS television show. The visual appeal of food never eluded me, and styling seemed a natural next step.

I continue to develop recipes for magazines and commercial products and am the author of food blog High Heels & Frijoles as well as the Serious Eats columns, “Sandwiched” and "Let Them Eat Cake." I live between New York City and Los Angeles.