A dream

Our friend Ludette Dayrit, the "mistress" of Ecole Le Cordon Bleu Manille, has a dream. To start with, Le Cordon Bleu Manille is the pioneer culinary school in the country. Recently she observed that a lot of food experts have established their own school and that they have attracted a lot of ambitious young people who want to carve a niche in the hospitality (basically food) industry. Now she wants all of these to unite and form a grouping called The Culinary Foundation of the Philippines. Big dream, indeed, in a country where personal consideration normally comes first.

Nevertheless, she gathered a few people at the Living Well Demo Kitchen on the third floor of The Poduim one day and presented her idea. Noting the global thrust of practically every endeavor, the lady wants to build a networking entrepreneural system where small groups would each promote and propagate Filipino cuisine within and outside the Philippines. This is a massive task and we wish Ludette success.

Meantime, she had this promising chef, her nephew Anton, conduct a demo that afternoon. He demonstrated a very simple way of cooking Putanesca sauce, using a few pieces of anchovies and capers which he drained to remove what he termed as "saltiness". He had green and black olives ("for color") and the usual fresh tomatoes, garlic and onions. A tip from the chef (this we also heard from other culinary experts)–when sautéing, onions must be cooked transparent first before adding the garlic, to avoid the latter from being burned. At the end of the brief demo we had savory Pasta Putanesca.

This demo kitchen is well equipped for cooking lessons. In fact, cooking demos take place here regularly, conducted by various culinary experts. Each week, a different topic is tackled. Interested homemakers and even house husbands may contact the store for the schedule.

We did not realize that Living Well Home Store is a well-stocked outlet of practically everything one needs in a home. That day, the display was made more attractive by the stuffed toys attractively dressed in Christmas garb. The one we picked up from the collection costs more than P500. All around are plates, trays, casseroles, Japanese sushi plates and even barbecue pits. One needs to spend at least half a day to really get to see each and every item, and decide what to buy.

There is an abundance of soup packs from various neighboring countries, principally Thailand and Singapore. Now Vietnam has also entered the retail food market by way of a collection of packed noodles with varying flavors. The problem is other than the name of the product, no other English terms or illustrations are printed on the package. So we are left to figure out what is required, such as adding water to dry noodles, etc. We did this with the Vietnamese "Pho" Rice-Noodle Beef soup and we had a tasty starter. It is rather spicy. But sad, to us, is the fact that most of these are flavored with MSG.

We were rummaging through old files to get rid of unwanted, used ones when we came across this recipe for Christmas Morcon. We could not even recall who passed this on to us. The paper has turned brown, but the dish is, of course, timeless. You need one kilo beef (preferably tapadera, which you should ask your butcher to prepare for morcon), one tin Vienna sausage, two whole gherkins (cut lengthwise), strips of cheddar cheese, strips of liver, one carrot (thinly sliced lengthwise), two tomatoes (remove seeds and cube), diced onion, one can tomato sauce, soy sauce and pepper to taste.

Roll the beef, alternating the second to fifth ingredients. Tie with a string. Put in a casserole with tomatoes and onions. Add soy sauce and pepper. Cover and simmer for five minutes. Then pour water, enough to cover beef, and let boil. When in full boil, lower the heat and simmer until the morcon becomes tender. When nearly done, pour the tomato sauce and reduce liquid to gravy consistency. When ready to serve cut in half-inch slices, pour the gravy and garnish with fresh parsley.

There’s a new blended drink at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf outlet at the Alabang Town Center. It is blended iced yam topped with whipped cream (optional). Nice, like you are having liquefied halo-halo with ube flavor. We have always liked ube, so this, indeed is something we are happy about.

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