There are some people that are shy about sharing their culture and cringe when a camera is brought out.Elisa Fox, originally from Santiago, Dominican Republic, isn't one of those people.She is only too happy to act as ambassador for her culture. She recently cooked some traditional Latin American food for The Royal Gazette dressed in native costume a white dress with red and blue stripes.Mrs Fox has lived in Bermuda with her family for six years. She works for Western Union in Somerset. She is one of about 100 people in Bermuda from the Dominican Republic. She and several others recently formed a club for people here from that country and have a Facebook page under the name ‘Todo Por La Patria'.On a Friday evening at a friend's house in Somerset, she cooked up some traditional Dominican food, tostones (fried plantains), fried meat and a traditional drink called coquito (little coconut).“We make tostones on special occasions, or when I can find plantains in Bermuda,” said Mrs Fox.For this recipe, she cut the plantains up into rounds, and then fried them in oil until they were golden brown. They were soon sizzling away in oil on the stove. When they were golden brown, she removed the banana pieces and patted away the oil. She put the fried rounds into a special metal banana squasher that looked a bit like a small, hand-held waffle iron. She also had an alternative tool that used two wooden blocks to flatten the banana pieces. The result of either implement was a banana patty that was then refried until it was crispy.“You can fry it for as long as you like,” she said. “Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, it's up to you.”She appeared to be pretty relaxed about what she was cooking, despite repeated mutterings of “rapido, rapido” (quick, quick) at the frying bananas. One had the idea she had done this many times before. She didn't cook from a recipe, but instead cooked from memory. She said she started learning how to cook when she was just a little girl.“My mother taught me when I was seven years old,” she said. “At that age we learn how to make rice and tostones and other things. Our granny helped to teach it to us. My son, Gabriel, loves cooking. He is always around my feet when I am cooking.”Gabriel, 11 was indeed sniffing around the cooking at that moment. He said, “I love my mother's pizzas. She also has a great way of making custard.”Mrs Fox took an appreciative sniff of the frying bananas and gave them a poke with a wooden spoon.“I feel like I am at home when I am cooking,” she said. “If I was at home my mother, my cousins and aunts and friends would also be here and we would all be cooking together.”Common ingredients in Dominican cooking are onions, garlic and cilantro. They also eat a lot of rice and fresh fruit, although they love to mash and fry things. Cooking is a serious affair and a lot of women are stay-at-home mothers who cook large meals three times a day. Mrs Fox said it was not unusual to have hot cocoa, boiled and mashed mango, a fried egg and maybe some fried chicken for breakfast.“The freshness of the food is of the utmost importance to Dominicans,” said Mrs Fox. “A lot of times if they try a meal and something is not fresh, they won't eat it or they will send it back in a restaurant.”To make the fried meat she blended together red pepper, cilantro and vinegar as a marinade. The meat was then fried until cooked. The marinade gave the meat a delicious, bold flavour. After cooking up the tostones, and fried meat, Mrs Fox also whipped up a traditional drink called coquito the end result is very much like our Christmas eggnog.