Growing up in Westchester, Miami’s center of suburban Cubanía, Jorge Bravo took for granted his maternal grandma’s picadillo (ground-beef hash). He didn’t fully appreciate the time and effort it took to fry up malanga chips, now a packaged staple at the supermarket.

"I wanted to eat hamburgers,’ recalls the Miami-born Bravo with a wry laugh.

No more. The 41-year-old Cuban-American has launched HispanicKitchen.com, an English-language social networking site touted as the digital equivalent of abuela’s kitchen table. It gathers the culinary traditions of Hispanic countries from Argentina to Cuba to Spain and serves up ideas and commentary along with rice and beans.

"I want to show people that Latin food is much broader than Mexican or Tex-Mex food,’ Bravo says. "This is a chance to explore.’

Hispanic Kitchen features recipes, videos, blogs, interviews and a lot of sharing by Latin food aficionados, including a number of chefs. This is where you come to find a recipe (and a story) about tembleque, a jiggly Puerto Rican dessert. Another tab leads you to a list of specialty stores that stock a dizzying variety of hot peppers (the Albuquerque-based Chile Addict Store) and all culinary things from Spain (Spanishtable.com).

Interactive site

When Bravo began toying with the idea of a Latin food site more than a year ago, he knew he wanted it to be interactive. "The beauty of social networking is that you can share experiences and learn from each other,’ he says.

For many, it’s a chance to recreate the tastes of their childhood – or to discover the foods of the largest minority in the United States.

Bravo won’t say how many unique visitors the site gets, only that the numbers are growing, though the business is not yet self-sustaining. In the past month, the number of fans on Hispanic Kitchen’s Facebook page has nearly quadrupled (more than 7,200 at last count) and traffic to the website has doubled.

Eighty-five percent of Hispanic Kitchen members are women. At 42, the average visitor is 15 years older than the average U.S. Hispanic. Bravo expects to attract younger visitors as Hispanic youngsters mature, marry – and become nostalgic for home cooking.

Members’ interests and cultural backgrounds have surprised Bravo. For one thing, some 30 percent are non-Hispanic. Of the rest, 38 percent are from the Caribbean, 15 percent from South America, 13 percent from Mexico and the remaining from Spain.

Healthy focus

Bravo has recruited bloggers and chefs from various culinary traditions, like Denisse Oller, a former New York TV news anchor turned chef. Oller, who writes about food and nutrition for AARP’s Viva magazine, focuses on healthy Latino recipes that "are easy to put together and easy on the pocketbook.’

New York personal chef Norma Torres, author of the Plátanos, Mangoes and Me! blog, posts about six times a month. "I get to meet so many people online without leaving home,’ she says. (A friend she made on the site, a fellow foodie from Argentina, is flying in for Torres’ 60th birthday.)

Hispanic Kitchen might not have come to be if the economy hadn’t been in the doldrums. Bravo, who worked in the media and publishing industry, took time off to pursue a master’s at Florida International University. When he graduated in 2008, he spent six months looking for a job, but "this entrepreneurial itch I’ve always had’ kept growing.

A Food Channel addict, he realized that, except for a handful of cable shows, there was nothing for born-again Latino foodies in English. It seemed a logical niche.

His wife, Maydel Santana-Bravo, director of media relations at FIU, encouraged him to try, pointing out that there were probably thousands of people like her. Raised in a Cuban-American household of cooks who created elaborate dishes without recipes, Santana-Bravo wanted to reconnect with her food roots.

"My 92-year-old grandmother made the best carne asada in the world," she says, "but if we didn’t write down the recipe it was going to be lost.’

Carne asada, a popular pot roast in Latin America, also is referred to as boliche mechado, or stuffed eye round roast. The Bravos like to serve it with fluffy white rice and something fried, like tostones (smashed and twice-fried green plantains).

Carne Asada (Latin-Style Pot Roast)

Serves 8 or more

1 (3-pound) eye round roast

2 large onions

1 green bell pepper

6 garlic cloves

4 bay leaves

3 sour oranges (or a bottle of sour orange juice)

2 cups dry cooking wine (divided use)

1 large or 2 small Spanish-style chorizo sausages

Salt

Vegetable oil

4 strips bacon

5 tablespoons tomato paste (half a 6-ounce can)

2 tablespoons sugar

Note: Have the butcher cut a slit down the center of the roast.

The day before cooking this dish, slice the onions and green pepper and smash the garlic. Put them in a large, deep dish (I used my lasagna dish) together with the meat, bay leaves, sour orange juice and about a cup of dry cooking wine. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Turn the meat halfway through the marinating process to ensure even flavoring.

Four hours before you intend to serve the roast, remove the casings from the chorizo and stuff it into the slit in the meat. (Ham works well as a stuffing, too.) Lightly salt the meat and sear it in hot oil. Drain the onions, green pepper and garlic used in the marinade and fry them in the same oil. Wrap the meat in bacon strips.

Place the roast and the cooked vegetables in a large, heavy pot. Add the remaining cup of wine mixed with the tomato paste and 1⁄2 cup water (monitor and add a little more water if needed as it cooks). Bring it to a low simmer and cook, covered, for about 3 hours.

Remove the meat from the cooking pot and pick out the bacon and bay leaves. With a hand-held blender, lightly blend the sauce, adding the sugar. Return the meat to the pot to simmer for a few more minutes. Let the meat rest for 10 or 15 minutes before slicing and serving with the sauce, which I strained, for a finer feel.

Recipe adapted from Maydel Santana-Bravo.