Anyone can cook.” These are the famous words of chef Auguste Gusteau from the animated film Ratatouille. But when one’s expertise in the kitchen is defined by opening cans and heating water for instant noodles, one is forced to reconsider. The latter skills practically summarize my capabilities as a cook. Admittedly, food preparation is not one of my strong points. But after attending last weekend’s installment of the EAT Dining Festival’s chef tours at Market! Market! in Taguig City, I was able to squelch a little bit of these culinary frustrations. True, I still can’t make lemon meringue pie out of lemons, but at least I won’t make glass out of lemonade. Kitchen klutzes like myself might consider attending the continuing mall tours sponsored by The Philippine STAR, Ayala Malls, and BPI. The ones I attended proved pretty useful. They featured celebrity chefs Tristan Encarnacion, Shirly May Galvez, Jing Rojas, and Nancy Reyes-Lumen who demonstrated some easy-to-do recipes for even the most culinary-challenged.
When you know that professional chefs enjoy lutong bahay just like you do, it makes the idea of having to cook one of their recipes less daunting. Chef Tristan Encarnacion’s dish for his demonstration was a French-Asian fusion of pan-seared chicken breast with fresh blackberry cream sauce. It isn’t exactly something you can get at the carinderia down the street. To be honest, the recipe’s name itself sounds a bit snooty. But he assured the predominantly young crowd who came to watch him at Market! Market! that it isn’t difficult to make. Trust the resident chef of popular morning show Unang Hirit, to make it suitable for the Filipino palate. Like most of us, chef Tristan loves local specialties like caldereta, kare-kare, sinigang, and other things our moms cook at home.
“Honestly, I’m more comfortable when it comes to Filipino cuisine. But traditional Filipino cooking takes a long time, and for an afternoon demo, I have to work within a time limit. That’s why I chose this dish,” says chef Tristan.
Done in about 30 minutes, the chicken was thoroughly cooked to just the right amount of juiciness on the inside, with a firm and brown exterior. The accompanying blackberry cream sauce had a concentrated sweetness, which complemented the saltiness of the chicken. I cannot pretend to know what categorizes this dish as French-Asian fusion, but as far as I’m concerned, you can get chicken in places other than France and Asia. I know Kentucky is one of those places. But what matters is that chef Tristan’s sweet and salty chicken surprise with berries, albeit a bit different, didn’t disappoint. The way certain members of the crowd wolfed down their portions during the taste test should be flattering to the chef.
I’m not sure if it’s still showing on TV, but there’s a commercial for a popular burger joint where a head chef, while working his team to the bone, is interrupted by a delivery guy with his order of a Big Mac. I remembered the ad when chef Shirly May Galvez of Sumo Sam mentioned that after a long day in the kitchen, surrounded by lots of savory foods, she would drive through that store’s outlet for a hot fudge sundae.
“My favorite foods are chocolates, ice cream, anything sweet. I have a sweet tooth and sometimes, after spending so much time in the kitchen — where a lot of the food is salty and I have to taste everything — I just want to get something really sweet. So I drive thru for a sundae,” she confides.
Chef Shirly prepared three dishes for the attentive crowd — spicy shirataki, ebi tempura, and a house specialty, Sumo Sam’s Rock n’ Roll Sushi. The spicy shirataki, stir-fried noodles with shrimp and vegetables, is a popular dish among the vegetarian customers who frequent Sumo Sam. The dish has a smoky flavor and is spicy but not overwhelming. The popular ebi tempura is the main ingredient in the Rock n’ Roll Sushi, which is essentially an ebi (shrimp) tempura maki roll.
“The owners of Sumo Sam visit Japan once in a while to monitor trends in the local cuisine, and one of the things they picked up is that some places use ebi tempura as the filling for their maki rolls,” shares chef Shirly.
The texture of the fried, crispy breading, surrounded by fluffy vinegar-doused rice, is a welcome change from the typical raw-fish-inside-sushi experience. It was while talking with chef Shirly that I remembered my only attempt at making a maki roll. It had the essentials: Japanese rice, Japanese vinegar, Japanese mayo, and nori, with spicy tuna from a can to go in the center. All in all, I think it went pretty well. The roll was about two inches wide so I didn’t bother cutting it, and just enjoyed the thing like a shawarma sandwich, dipping it in a dessert bowl with wasabi and soy sauce after every bite. Forget about the Japanese aesthetic of preparing attractive food.
Speaking with chef Jing Rojas got my culinary hopes up a little bit, especially when we talked about one of her featured dishes, laing pasta.
She explains, “The laing is from a can, the mushroom soup is from a can. Mixing all the ingredients takes just five minutes – eight minutes, if you include the time it took to open the cans. Assemble everything, bake it, and that’s it: You have a dish that your guests are going to enjoy and even you will enjoy.”
So I suppose my can opening skills really do have some purpose. And the laing pasta was really great, with little bits of mushroom adding an earthy flavor to the dish and crusty cheese topping it off.
The other dishes that were part of the demonstration were white Pinoy salad which, unlike the typical fruit cocktail and cream concoction, used local fruits and preserves; and minced chicken with lettuce, a great way to keep a meal light while not scrimping on flavor. The hoisin sauce and sesame flavors of this dish are common to the Filipino taste buds.
“These are fast and easy dishes that fit the budget,” says chef Jing. “They are a bit different and are great for bringing to potluck parties, or when you have guests coming over.”
On stage with chef Jing was chef Nancy Reyes-Lumen, the “Adobo Queen” and host of the culinary travelogue show The Pinoy Foodie (which airs every Sunday from 8:30 to 9 a.m. on GMA 7). Of course, she chose adobo for her featured dish. She said that adobo, because of an abundance of instant mixes, is a very easy dish to prepare. She shared one thing about adobo that you might want to try at home: “You marinate it overnight, and cook it the next day over very low heat, maybe over the time it takes to play one whole CD. But don’t eat it yet! Eat it the next day, because that should be a really good adobo.”
Chef Nancy is a regular at Market! Market! and appreciates the EAT Dining Festival because it is a way for people to make new discoveries about food and about themselves. “You get to share your knowledge of cooking with other people. And we learn from the audience, too, like when they share their recipes with us. Most of the time I like the interaction because I don’t want to lose touch with the people. When the Filipino cook, not chef, discovers how good he is, maybe he will finally stop saying, ‘Cook lang ako, eh’ and replace that with ‘I am a Filipino cook and I am good at it.’”
At last weekend’s EAT Dining Festival at Market! Market! there was something to delight everyone. Great food, including STAR-inspired dishes from the participating restaurants, was served, excellent cooking tips from the food industry’s best were shared, and each afternoon was capped off with superb music from top local bands like SinosiKat, Brownman Revival, and Kalayo.
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The Eat Dining Festival continues next weekend at TriNoma Mall, Aug. 19 to 21, featuring cooking demonstrations by chefs Shirly May Galvez, Heny Sison, and Claude Tayag. See you there!
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E-mail me at enricomiguelsubido@gmail.com.