Savory & Sweet-Spiced Beef Stew

Chef Jona learned the importance of ingredients at a very early age. His first memories are of joining his father as they harvested oysters and fished, picking up herbs and vegetables on the way back home to prepare the daily menu at the Fonda (restaurant) run by his family. He started his culinary adventure behind the scenes, working his way up from the role of dishwasher, discovering his passion for cooking along the way. He enrolled in a culinary program at the Institute of Tourism and Hotels of Quebec (ITHQ) in Montreal, where he obtained his first degree in culinary arts. From Montreal he traveled to Spain, then Portugal and Morocco, studying the local dishes, the food supply and food accessibility among all social classes, while also cooking for the King of Morocco.
The cuisine of the Mediterranean greatly inspired and humbled Jona with its elegant simplicity and the abundance of flavors. Through his travels and tasting delicious dishes he recognized it as the cuisine that reflects his ethos and style of cooking. It is a cuisine that at its root is simple yet elegant, where the ingredients and how they are treated matter. A cuisine where flavors, vibrancy and nutritional balance coexist without compromises.
After 15 years of developing a holistic approach to worldly cuisine through his travels, Jona became one of the pioneers in the food delivery industry starting a Chicago-based meal delivery company named Cooked. The idea of starting this business came as the solution to a personal challenge, that of how to feed healthy clean food to his family in an easy and convenient way. Cooked allowed him to share their love of healthy, nourishing food with busy folks across the country. In 2020, what is now Food For Health acquired Cooked and Jona became the Vice President, Food Service. This position provided him the opportunity to scale his efforts by providing thousands of fresh, medically tailored, and healthy meals through its Food For Health social charitable program and Food Benefit Company social business.
His first love in the culinary world was the richness in flavors and nutritional wisdom that exist in ethnic cuisines across the globe. Eating and learning from them will always be a part of who he is. However, he has found two new passions during the past 10 plus years in commercial food production.

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