Colombian Traditional Cook | Creole Pastry Specialist | Culinary Researcher & Author | Artisan in Leaf Wrapping and Natural Food Packaging
She is a Colombian traditional cook, Creole pastry specialist, and educator. Her work brings together knowledge passed down through generations of women in her family, formal culinary training, and a distinctive manual ability to work with leaves and other natural materials.
Her connection with traditional sweets and baking began in childhood, when she helped her great-grandmother prepare Colombian desserts. She later complemented this family knowledge with professional culinary training, developing skills in regional cooking, culinary techniques, food production, ingredient handling and food safety.
Within El Toque Colombiano, Heidy has developed a strongly practice-based approach to research: she researches through cooking. She tests ingredients, reconstructs recipes, compares doughs and cooking methods, experiments with different leaves, and transforms that knowledge into recipes, publications, workshops and culinary experiences.
One of the most distinctive aspects of her work is her craftsmanship. Heidy has developed particular skill in folding, shaping and constructing with leaves, an expertise she shares through workshops such as The Art of Wrapping and Leaf Containers and Packaging. Her work explores not only traditional food-wrapping techniques, but also the creation of functional containers and packaging from banana leaves and other plant materials. In this practice, culinary knowledge intersects with craftsmanship, design, sustainability and food heritage.
This expertise became central to her research into Colombia’s envueltos foods prepared, wrapped and often cooked in leaves. Heidy took part in documenting and reconstructing preparations from different regions of Colombia, studying doughs, leaves, wrapping forms and cooking techniques. This research contributed to Envueltos de plátano, yuca y maíz en las cocinas tradicionales de Colombia, which she co-authored and which received international recognition at the 2021 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Her expertise has also entered academic settings: in 2024, the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira invited her to lead a workshop on traditional Colombian envueltos, presenting her as a traditional cook and pastry specialist.
Her work extends to Colombian Creole pastry and confectionery, culinary research, writing, teaching and professional cooking. She is also the author of Legado Gastronómico Afroyumeca, a research project dedicated to documenting Afro-Colombian food heritage in Santander and Barrancabermeja.
For Heidy, tradition is not static. It survives through practice: by cooking, researching, teaching and finding ways for knowledge to remain useful and transmissible. That combination of inherited knowledge, professional culinary training and craftsmanship defines her role within El Toque Colombiano.
Recognition and Public Trajectory
Heidy Pinto Agámez’s work has progressively gained recognition in publishing, academic, cultural and institutional settings, both in Colombia and internationally.
One of the central milestones in her career was the research and publication of Envueltos de plátano, yuca y maíz en las cocinas tradicionales de Colombia. The project involved travelling, recovering regional preparations, reconstructing recipes and studying doughs, leaves, wrapping techniques and cooking methods. Heidy played a direct role in the practical culinary research behind the book.
In 2021, Envueltos received international recognition at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, first receiving continental recognition and later being named best in the world within its category. International media presented Heidy Pinto and Zoraida “Chori” Agámez as the Colombian cooks behind the award-winning project, highlighting their research into Colombia’s leaf-wrapped foods and wrapping traditions. The Guardian
Heidy has also received independent recognition as an educator. In 2024, the Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira invited her to lead a workshop on traditional Colombian envueltos at its Sustainable Gastronomy Laboratory. The university introduced her as a recognised pastry specialist and traditional cook, as well as an author of Envueltos, specifically highlighting her experience and research in this field. comunicaciones.utp.edu.co
This recognition reflects one of the areas Heidy has developed most distinctly within El Toque Colombiano: practical work with doughs, leaves and wrapping techniques, together with the teaching of those skills. Her own workshops include Leaf Containers and Packaging and The Art of Wrapping, where leaves are explored not only as part of traditional cooking, but also as materials for crafting functional food containers and packaging.
Heidy has also developed an independent body of research and authorship. She is the author of Legado Gastronómico Afroyumeca, a project dedicated to documenting Afro-Colombian culinary heritage connected with Santander and Barrancabermeja. The book emerged from a cultural research project supported through a departmental cultural grant and represents an individual work of authorship by Heidy Pinto Agámez.
In 2025, Heidy joined Diana “Lulú” Tolosa in the Barrancabermeja team that presented Bollo Huevos de Pescado at Colombia’s National Traditional Cuisine Award. The proposal received third place nationally. Colombia’s Ministry of Cultures described the group behind the preparation as cooks and researchers safeguarding an ancestral food tradition of the Magdalena Medio. el toque colo;biqno qportes cqd… The Ministry officially records Bollo Huevos de Pescado — Barrancabermeja, Santander as the third-place recipient in the 2025 National Traditional Cuisine Award. Ministerio de Cultura
That same year, the Permanent Mission of Colombia to the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. hosted a workshop and dinner with Chori Agámez and Heidy Pinto as traditional Colombian cooks, bringing their work into an international cultural and diplomatic setting. washington-oea.mision.gov.co
In 2026, this international dimension continued through the Cultural Diplomacy Initiative of Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During a programme organised by the Colombian Embassy in Panama, the Ministry officially presented Chori Agámez and Heidy Pinto as Colombian traditional cooks and master bearers of the nation’s gastronomic heritage. panama.embajada.gov.co
Together, these recognitions reveal a professional trajectory of her own within the collective work of El Toque Colombiano. Heidy has moved from learning the foods and sweets made by the women in her family to researching, cooking, writing, teaching and publicly representing that knowledge.
Her work brings together traditional cooking, culinary training, practice-based research, authorship, leaf craftsmanship and the transmission of culinary knowledge. The awards and institutional invitations do not create that profile; they provide independent evidence of a body of work already developed over years.