I’m Enri Lemoine. A journalist by training, a Caraqueña at heart, and a cook and citizen of the world by vocation and by life.
In 2010, when I turned 50, I launched enrilemoine.com to celebrate. I had no idea that gift I gave myself would turn into 15 years of recipes, stories, videos and a community that keeps growing.
At 60 I created my bilingual YouTube recipe channel. And now, at 65, I’m semi-retired, 100% dedicated to my food blog and writing my first Venezuelan recipe book. I’m a writer who cooks or a cook who writes. The order of the factors does not alter the product.
I was born and raised in Caracas, a city that was always a melting pot of cultures thanks, among others, to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Lebanese and Syrian immigration,. That exposure from an early age opened my appetite for the different and turned me into a curious cook, without borders and without limits.
I’ve lived in Madrid, Geneva, New York, Southern California and Miami. Today I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, completely in love with the warmth of its people, its pace, its architecture and its climate. Every place left something in me. Every culture made me a better cook.
The foundation of everything is Venezuelan cuisine, which I carry in my DNA and will never stop cooking or celebrating. I put my two sons through college making polvorosas de pollo and hallacas.
For 14 years I worked for Ron Santa Teresa, an experience that turned me into a rum connoisseur and taught me that eating and drinking goes far beyond nourishment. From that position I collaborated with the Consejo Nacional del Ron, the body that regulates the Denominación de Origen Controlado Ron de Venezuela.
If Venezuelan cuisine is my DNA, Mediterranean is the one I discovered and learned to love as my own. There’s an Italian living in my tummy, and I have no intention of evicting him.
For me, Mediterranean cooking is not a list of dishes but a philosophy of ingredients: good bread, a good ibérico, a good chorizo, a proper Parmigiano Reggiano, mozzarella di bufala, burrata, Gorgonzola. And if olive oil is what gives flavor to my life, it’s the simple but honest ingredients that always bring me back to this cuisine.
I love cooking on the grill. I’m more of a fish person, although my BBQ pork ribs have a story of their own: I was a National Pork Board ambassador, and those ribs don’t lie.
Last but not least: bread. My life is before and after I started making bread. Since 2010 every pizza in my house has been made by me. And since I learned to make sourdough, we eat no other bread in my house, including pizzas. I like to go back to the origin of things, and that shows in everything I publish: I cook almost everything from scratch.
I have a declared romance with bold flavors: anchovies, olives, capers. I love combining textures in every dish. And sweet and salty together is my idea of perfection, something that comes directly from Caracas cooking. Ron is my favorite spirit and the mojito my favorite rum cocktail. But I also love bubbles and Italian amari: I’m a Negroni, Aperol Spritz and vermouth kind of girl.
My recipes don’t require impossible techniques or hard-to-find ingredients. I test them, adjust them and test them again until I’m sure they’ll work. Many say my recipes are foolproof. For me, that’s the greatest compliment.
