Was i dreaming? No — this time I crossed the street with Mark Gil and had a brief exchange with him. Crossing the road from Harbor Square to CCP on a rainy Sunday, I glanced on my right and noticed that this mestizo that I was straddling the pedestrian lane with was the guy in the film that I’d watched the other night. Man, this was Mark Gil whose performance I just adored. I couldn’t put this moment to waste. I had to say something and talk to him quick lest I pass up my chance for that once-in-a-lifetime-crossing-the-road-encounter with this actor. If only for that suicide scene in Rotonda, i think he deserved to be noticed.

Me: Excuse me, sir. I just saw Rotonda and I think you did a great performance there. It was a very good film. Congratulations. (shaking hands with Mark)

Mark Gil: Really? Thank you. When did you watch it? Last night?

Me: No, sir. The other night.

MG: Are you attending the awarding ceremonies today?

Me: No, I’m watching Magnifico.

MG: Ah, it’s in the other theatre, no?

Me: Yes, at the Manuel Conde Theatre, sir.

MG: I haven’t seen it yet. I hope I could watch it too.

At this point, we had already reached CCP. I had no choice but to end this brief encounter with him.

Me: Okay, sir. It was nice meeting you. Congratulations again.

MG: Yeah. Thanks. Have a great time!

What a way to end my week-long rendezvous with cinemalaya. Had I bumped onto his son Sid Lucero on that rain-glazed lane, I would’ve fainted in his arms in the middle of the street! Hehehe.

         There’s a kind of bliss that i can’t explain that even when i was trudging along the sidewalk of Buendia tonight, I couldn’t help but smile. Several hours ago at the CCP, I got to talk to Pete Lacaba — the Pete Lacaba. And that’s what makes me really happy!  Umm, let this entry be my amuse-bouche offering for tonight; I’d just like to bask in my newfound-bliss at the moment.

July 8, 2006

Saturday

Before the Legacy Buffet…

AM

Sabato giorno. Saturday morning: the day before our big day – the Legacy buffet. Our class is all hyped up with the bustle of the kitchen. Mia, our sous chef for the hot section, is back in her turf – the newly renovated kitchen in the farther end of the cacs ground floor. Nikki, our pastry sous chef,  has transferred to the end near the oven and has busied herself with pastry work. Ben, our executive chef, remains unperturbed with the onslaught of kitchen tasks, doing organizational work on his desk. I, on the other hand, am assigned to take charge of the cold station, doing the dressings and prep work for tomorrow’s buffet.

Rona assists me with the work, which is comparably easier than what the guys in the hot kitchen have to do. We don’t really have to cook anything except maybe for the mayonnaise – which we have to heat over a double boiler – for safety’s sake. I get some of the ingredients necessary for our prep and proceed to jotting down my station’s workplan for the day to keep ourselves organized in our station. I figure I have to do the salad dressings first, which are the easiest in the world to prepare: balsamic vinaigrette for the white cheese and grape salad; ranch dressing, raspberry vinaigrette and bleu cheese dressing for the mixed mesclun and the patis-calamansi dressing for the Thai Salad. I ask Rona to do the mise-en-place for the East Meets West Sushi before she proceeds with the dressing for the Caesar Salad.

The guys on the table beside us are also busy: the two Chrisses/ Krisses (whatever!)  and John are helping Nikki out with pastry work, fitting the pastry doughs for the mini fruit tarts in miniature molds. Jordan, too is with Nikki. I go to him from time to time, borrowing a thing or two: measuring spoons, measuring cups and anything else his station would have that I don’t have.

I proceed with doing the the mise-en-place for the dressings, starting off with raspberry vinaigrette, as I just toss in a handful of frozen raspberries in the blender and combine it with the dressing that I prepared yesterday. With a teaspoon in hand, I taste a drop of the vinaigrette and let out a pucker: perfect; its sweetness rounding off the flavors perfectly with its tang. The mixture gives off a pinkish hue, contributed by the addition of raspberries.

Next, I prepare the ingredients for the balsamic vinaigrette. In a bowl, I whisk in some balsamic vinegar, a piece of minced shallot, vegetable oil, a splash of olive oil, amber-colored honey, a dribble of mustard, lemon zest  for flavor and a pinch of salt and pepper. Tomorrow, I am going to add basil chiffonade to give it that final touch.

With Rona doing the mayonnaise, I happily pack my finished dressings in disposable containers, labeling them with their respective names and a “Do Not Touch” in case some idiot from another class mistakes it as garbage.

The bleu cheese dressing comes next. Ben gives me the sliver of bleu cheese packed in foil and am dumbfounded when I see the price : P115.00!! All for that thin sliver of bleu cheese! Oh, well..bleu cheese from France.  One wonders at the logic behind all this pricing stuff.

Slowly, I peel off the golden foil and begin to mash the stuff in my bowl. The bleu cheese is moist, crumbly with bluish veins (thus, the name bleu!). I pour in some cream and squeeze in some lemon to create the effect of sour cream, which I ran out of, as I had to share it with the pastry people. After blending it with what I think is the right amount of cream, I let Kris have a taste of it. He winces. Debbie does the same too (“yuck!”, she blurts out) – this reaction coming from people who hate cheese. Rona, who admits to being a cheese lover has a different reaction, though, “Masarap!”, as she licks off her spoon. I, too, am satisfied.

PM

            I start doing the mise and place for the salads. The kani, I slice into halves; the shallots and bell peppers for the Thai salad, I slice. I get the seedless grapes from the fridge and start slicing them up, also into halves. They are like the moon, exuding a purplish hue on a dark night. They are also like the eyes of a Chinese girl in a story I once read about as a child, from a book that my Mommy Luth had bought for me in Beijing.

            From time to time, I approach Ben to follow up on the ingredients for the futo maki and the baguette for the croutons for the Caesar. Outside, it it is dusk, yet, not one piece of ingredient has arrived.

            What to do when the rest of the ingredients are unavailable? Sort out the pile of lettuces in the fridge. There’s a lot of them, too much of them that I ask Jeff to help me wash and dry them up. “You need to dry them up with a clean rag or a paper towel individually, Jeff,” I say, grinning from ear to ear. Poor him, with the stash of cabbage all waiting to be dabbed dry. Good thing, there’s always that reliable salad spinner — the thought pops in my head in one of those lightbulb moments. Yes, Jeff doesn’t have to go through the drying-each-piece-of-lettuce-leaf-with-a-papertowel  process. Lui e uno fortunato ragazzo.

            Sometime in between the mixings, bakings, slicings and kneadings, right in the middle of a rush-hour evening, something strikes that would halt us in our tracks. Blackout – a  perfect surprise for us who have committed our souls to preparing good food for our guests tomorrow, us who have yet to prepare half of  what’s included in our repertoire of dishes. Call it good timing.

            The dim kitchen then becomes a venue for drama, with Jordan and Jeff improvising on a scene: Jeff becomes the husband, and Jordan, well, the wife. Husband and wife are having a heated argument. Voices raised, husband takes out a well-sharpened knife. Wife shrieks…

            Then, cut. The actors exit. The kitchen is bright again…

            Then dark again. Pitch black as the kitchen is, we focus our eyes on the sole figure who literally becomes our source of light: Ben ambles around with what seems like a miner’s lamp enwrapping his forehead.

            A few minutes pass and the kitchen is a bright hub of culinary activity again. We proceed with what he have to finish. Almost everybody helps out in the pastry, including myself, who volunteer to do a batch of Pate a Choux.

            Meawhile, Rona and Debbie, after several hours of careful folding and handling, finish up several batches of Tamago. I, on the other hand, prepare all the stuff needed for our sushi. The nori have to be cut in halves; the mangoes and avocados are to lay undisturbed on the table, to be sliced in the morning. At 12 midnight, I receive a text message from Olive, a very good friend: "kumusta na? nakauwi ka na ba? Ingat ka pauwi." To which i reply: "D2 pa din. Trabaho pa din." She texts back: "Grabe kayo. C u 2morow."

             Grabe talaga, i want to tell her, but still we are toiling for this one-time event with our blood and sweat, however cliche-ish that may sound.

             At about 12:30 am, Sunday, we head home, knowing that we were not going to sleep a wink. Allora, mi scusi per favore.

…to be continued

            Our international cooking classes temporarily over, I head off to café ysabel today for an afternoon of wine tasting. I am a bit ecstatic over our session today. I don’t usually take alcohol, but what the heck – today I am determined to try it all out and learn what I have to learn. Following Chef Bel’s advice, I decide to wear something light and comfy today – my brown Einstein shirt and sneakers – brown to cover up any wine stains that might accidentally spill on my shirt.

            At ten am, Chef Gene orients us on what we are abouat to do, “You are going to do sensory evaluation before the actual wine tasting,” he tells us as  Miss Marilyn distributes the handouts. I look at the list and see a checklist of classified flavors and fragrances. Memories of  my sensory evaluation class in my senior year in college suddenly come pouring like chinks of sunlight in between slits of time: Sensory Evaluation. Dr. Mabesa.  How we used to evaluate Eight o Clock for different sensory tests every meeting, yes, every meeting, for one whole semester ( except for maybe, three sessions where we had to detect scents and other fruit flavors) to the point of saturation when our tummies and taste buds had no choice but to wave white flags. Today, after several years of being away from the sensory evaluation lab, I am back again – minus the accompanying statistical analysis, the compartmentalized sensory evaluation booths, in a different setting with a different set of people.

            Chef Gene gives us the go signal and so, we enter the fine dining area and witness an array of  small glasses containing liquids of various colors and hues, carefully arranged on a long table opposite the large mirror. Classified in groups arethe different flavors and aromas: floral, tropical, fruit, oak; yeasty, earthy and moldy, herbal and vegetative, smokey and chemical. I decide to start off with the milk and vanilla based flavors, with most of my classmates trooping to the herb flavored stuff , sniffing away our scent memories, probably having flashes of memories of a certain place or time  in the process. We sniff and and recall all the scents in those little glasses – custard, pomelo, tarragon, celery, kiamoi, basil, even gasoline and diesel that my poor nerves couldn’t detect even if my olfactories were the last ones to fail should I breathe my last.  By the time I get to the last group of scents, my olfactories are already overwhelmed, inundated by the rush of scents that my brain wouldn’t make out of anymore.

            In the afternoon, we go directly to the long table. Mia, Rona and I decide to sit opposite Chef Gene for us to be able to hear his annotations clearly, thereby making note-taking easier. In a few minutes after being seated, Mia feels the chill from the new airconditioner which is practically juxtaposed with her. “Wag kang mag-alala,” I say, “di ka na giginawin later pag nakainom na tayo.” Which is true as alcohol heats your body up. Which is why nature dictates that sex and alcohol are the perfect duo. Well, arguably so. MIa ends up placing a pair of table napkins on her shoulders, that later on is replaced with Ben’s polo.

            After a few minutes, Sir Cosme and the waiters start pouring the wine on our respective glasses, with Miss Marilyn handing us the list of the wines we are about to try. I am aghast. The handout shows an extensive list of whites and reds, about 21 of them, all waiting to be assessed, with all their flavors and scents to be jotted down on our notebooks. Hah — good luck, Colette, is all that I could manage to mutter.

            We kick off our wine tasting with the whites, with Chef Gene instructing us to aerate our wines by swirling the glasses. This is to allow the oxygen to ripen our wine, he says. We tip it and observe its clarity, taking note if it has sedimentation. We swirl it again to check for the body, swirl it one more time to check for legs, which according to chef Bel looks like cooking oil clinging to the sides of the pan. We then sniff it and detect for familiar scents. Finally, we take a sip and try to note down the presence of various flavors.

            Several months ago, I watched Sideways, a film about wine and friendship. I watched it at a time when wine was totally foreign to me, and was amused in one of the scenes where the two male protagonists did a wine tasting, with guy number 1 detecting thoroughly detecting specific scents of edam cheese, boysenberries (or was it raspberries) and guy number two having this “really?” or was it “duh” look. Amusing. Because I’d probably have the same reaction as guy number two had. I think I know how it feels like to be in his shoes.

            By the time I reach my third glass, I already feel tipsy, which is much like nursing a slight fever. The great thing about is that we get to enjoy our glasses of wine with good food, which becomes even better with our wines.

            First exercise, Chef Gene advises us to take the wine alone. He then tells us,  “Okay, now, sip the lemon and follow it with the wine.” We do it, and whoah, am amazed at how acid can really improve the taste of wine – from being a basic, slightly sour, alcoholic liquid – we taste the sweetness that the acid from the lemon contributed to the flavors in our mouths. We sip wine after sprinkling a bit of salt on our lemons and realize how much the flavor has improved: the wine becomes better, the flavor, more balanced.

            And off we go with a barrage of wines,starting off with the whites,  with Sir Cosme and the Café Ysabel waiters pouring the wines onto our glasses, replenishing it whenever needed, and the appetizers approaching  us like a deluge. Honestly, we are overwhelmed by this feast that even Rona, who sits on my right,  remarks, “Sana araw-araw ganito!” I couldn’t agree more.

            From our Butterly Ridge Chardonnay paired off with the lemon, we go to Monkey Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2005 and Gruner-Veltliner Smaragd 2002 Terrasen both of which are to be paired with Steamed Fish with Lobster Sauce.  Heavenly!

            We proceed  to Ernest & Julio Gallo Chardonnay 2004 to the Prahova Dry Muscat 2003, all with seafood or white meat, and not without us detecting for flavors and aromas and the presence of tannis. Chef Gene calls for the next set of wines at an even faster pace; we are wont to chase after the flavors we ought to detect. “Do you detect cat’s pee?” someone from the PM class asks me. Do I detect it?  I munch a piece of bread, snatch a handful of coffeebeans from the nearby saucer and smell it to refresh my overwhelmed sense of taste and smell and go back to sniffing the wine. Still I can’t detect the cat’s pee. “But I can detect the lychee here,” I say, holding out another glass of wine in my hand.

            We go to the reds: the Georges Duboef Beajolais Village 2004, the Camelot Pinot Noir 2004, San Valentin Grenache 2004 and so on and so forth, enjoying them with Salmon with Capers, Butter and Pernod. With the pizza, we sip a glass of Valpolicella which has strong leathery/stable smell and yes, kalamata olives but when that student from the PM class remarks that he detects almonds..well, I couldn’t anymore. We check the reds for their body and tannins. Rene Barber especially has strong tannins and a lot of spice.

            The most exciting part of the tasting comes – we are now into the dessert wines. The chefs bring us a cavalcade of desserts including a milk chocolate hazelnut mousse which is absolutely heaven on my palate. We pair it with Botrytis Semillon, which according to our chef, is a product of noble rot in grapes.  I like it – with its raisiny, fruity and mango notes. I also like the caramel-y, orange-y flavors of the Moscatel, with the caramel/arnibal notes taking the lead.

            To my utter amazement, I realize I’ve taken this wine seminar by heart, finishing almost all of the glasses to the last drop. Somebody from our group notices my cheeks and ears flushed. I can only manage to smile. Fortunately, I have Ma Kiko, our driver to drive me all the way to San Pablo. And I have Rona whose ample thighs I can lean my head on in the car while I am off chasing butterflies in my late afternoon dream.

            

            

            

            

            

            

Pasay Road, 7 am

The air is thick

with billowy swirls

of smog

attacking my nostrils

craving for the aroma

seeping from the hearth

frying eggs and –

could it be longganiza –-

from Amici di Don Bosco.

The road is long,

a serpent below

the grayish blue Makati sky

where I seek new adventures

where new adventures seek me.

I am a detective

ready to sniff at

all nuances of scents

here

where trees are stone

and wood is plastic

molten to the core,

permeating my nose

down to the pits of belly.

Imago

Why is it that

blinking

without an image of you

suffusing my head

seems no more impossible

than

turning summer days

to chill?

The way you speak

The way you speak reminds me

of forests

cradling wind-blown secrets

of silent marshes

and the hushed-up flutter

of leaves

humming nocturnal sonatas.

Deep within the trenches of my soul

you have blown poppies:

sun-dappled,

waltzing, whirling

between earth and sky

defying the law of gravity.

Speak,

so that I may find myself

bathed in the warmth of your light,

in the lightness of your being. 

Insomnia

Hours such as these

between eleven and three

bring the whirring

of the fan

to a deafening hum

the honking of the trucks

crashing against my ears

awake in the eye

of the dark.

As the aircon murmurs

its nightly prayer

its breath becomes a mantle of ice

on my skin.

I remember my Lolo. His name: Feliciano — Sanoy as the barrio folks here would address him.  He who would be my surrogate father, my yaya, my playmate. Everyday, when the sun was still as sleepy as i was, he would wake me up for a good breakfast, fetch me to school and get back to fetch me again when the bell rang. Then it was time to go to the canteen and buy whatever my tastebuds craved for — ice cream from Mang Bert, the sorbetero; Nips, Serge chocolate, Tutti Frutti, those chewy sugar-smattered candy orange slices whose brand escapes my memory and those powdered milk in small plastic jars that you sip (or suck) using a small straw. One hot day, i told him i wanted to eat Nagaraya. He bought me a whole wholesale pack from the market which had me having Nagaraya in my diet for almost a week.

When the cacao fruits in our backyard were ripe and full, we picked them with our hands and opened them up to reveal the pods in which clung the sweet flesh of the fruit. I would eat them with much gusto, my six-year old lips puckering up to the sweet-sour taste of the flesh, and spit the seeds out on our bilao. Then we’d clamber up our roof through a small window in the kitchen and dry the pods under the scorching sun. That was my first lesson in chocolate-making. We’d end up having jarfuls of tablea in our fridge, after going through the whole experience of roasting, grinding and molding the "tsokolate" with him. During New Year, these same chocolate tablets were the ones that my lola would mix in her copper jar using a wooden batidor to make hot, thick tsokolate eh, a chocolate concoction that our family shared over stories, and dishes as morcon, lengua estofada and pansit.

Sometimes, when we were just too lazy to do anything, I listened to his stories while he sat on his tumba-tumba (rocking chair). He talked about the war — the Americans, his life as a guerilla, peacetime. Peacetime. He’d always talk about peacetime. Come to think of it,  i think it was one of the first words I’d learned as a child. Garrote too. He had those really long, sharp fingernails that he took pride in — "panggarote sa iyo kapag matigas ang ulo mo." How could this bald-headed, gentle man pierce my skin with those claw-like fingers? It was a scary prospect that made me cower in fear. I knew then i had to behave and be a really good kid.

As i child i already saw the connection between our lives through history. He went to the same public school that i attended and in those old walls, floors and windows, I’d imagined my lolo as a young student like me. He told me about the old names of our buildings ("Iyang Mabini, dating Jefferson building yan. Iyang Bonifacio, dating Roosevelt" - or something to that effect). Unlike our generation that had the comfort of public transportation, lolo had to travel by foot to school, crossing the Mag-ampon river in our barrio and wetting his clothes along the way. 

Unfortunately, as most of the men and women of his time, Lolo didn’t get to finish school because of the war. Even then, Lolo brimmed with much wisdom. He grew up to be a man — fast; they all needed to for survival.

As a young man, he continued the legacy of his father: he supported his family by being a magkakawit ng niyog. Even in the latter years, when his skin was already dry and sagging and his knees wobbly, he would still find time to visit the ilaya, the woods in our community, with his pangkawit, bamboo ladder, his over-large sombrero and soiled black boots. I remember taking a fancy of those black boots which made my feet so lilliputian compared to the space left in its dark interiors everytime i’d wear them. During weekends, Lolo liked tagging me along to the ilaya, my small hands clinging on to his, then studded with green veins that i had the habit of pinching.

I can ramble on and on about my lolo. But for now, i just want to capture an image of him in a flash, as a sort of vignette,a memory captured in miniscule, in a poem.

I really miss my Lolo

For Lolo

Clearly,

between the mist of dream

and wakefulness

you appear –

your furrowed brows

brown as the earth

your father used to till,

your fingernails tapering

in hawk-sharp claws

ready to strike at naughty rascals

like me

dousing me with fear.

Your white patch of hair

prickly as new mown grass

in summer.

How I wish

I could touch your hands

just the way I used to

trace out each tributary –

green and winding,

carrying the blood that leads

to the veins of my hands

and fingers

still short and stubby.

10:00 am, 06 25 2006

Hahayaan kong yakapin pa ako ng mga unan

ibibigay ko ang katawan ko sa kumot

para puluputan nito.

Isusuko ko ang sarili ko sa tawag ng kamang

magdamag kong kaulayaw

nang ang ula’y sumisibol pa lamang

sa mga ulap.

Imumulat ko ang aking mga mata

at gagawin silang mga musmos

na naglalaro sa kawalan

kasama ng diwang kagigising lamang.

Ipipikit ko ang aking mga mata

upang ituloy ang panaginip na naudlot:

hahayaan ko itong humayo pa

kasama ka.

Yayakapin ko

hindi ang unan ko

mamumulupot ako

hindi sa kumot ko.

Kundi sa iyo

na inuukit ko

mula sa hangin at alaala

dito sa iwahig

ng aking kama.

habang sa labas ay umuulan.

Like a lover who keeps coming back to memories of an old flame, I’ve sort of rekindled my relationship with Neruda lately. How he weaves words and creates imagery to breathe life into his poems is perhaps something that would keep us steadfast on the idea of love and loving. 

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. Pablo Neruda

Wrote this one late night at the big kitchen during a photoshoot when most of us were already in the brink of sleepiness. Writing this kept my mind awake (and amused) even without my caffeine fix. Inspiration taken from one of those conversations with Jeff, a classmate.

11:15 pm, Big Kitchen, CACS

Hindi iyon ang alam ko

Hindi ang tuko sa madre cacao

ang sumasagi sa isip ko

kapag binabanggit mo

ang pelikulang pilipino

na palabas sa nueve

tuwing katanghalian.

noong mga bata pa tayo

Iyon siguro ang alam mo

pero iba ang tumatambad sa alaala ko:

Na kalaban ni Darna ang giant palaka

habang ang kawawang ike lozada’y

walang awang tinusok ang taba

gamit ang kawayang matulis

ng mga patay na nabuhay –

at ang mestisong si Walter Navarro, ka-tropa

ng mga galing sementeryo,

sa pagkagilalas ng pagkamusmos ko’y

love interest ng Darnang inidolo ko.

Na Drakula si George Estregan –

matutulis na pangil, nanlilisik ang mata –

na kinakalaban nina Rudy at Lorna

gamit ang pananggang putol na kamay

ng Sto. Nino

sa dagat ng dilim at lamig ng Baguio.

Na si Rio Locsin

ay may kakambal na daga –

isang kwentong ni imahinasyon ko’y

di maintindihan noong ako ay bata.

Na si Al Tantay ang kasintahan niya dito

ay isang bagay na narinig ko rin lang sa lola ko.

Na may isang anak ng suhang

namukadkad ang kagandahan sa pagdadalaga

na nagging dahilan

para kaiingitan siya’t

gustuhing kitilin ang buhay

ni Elizabeth Ramsey, ang reyna.

Kaya’t pagpasensiyahan mo na

kung di ko talaga alam

ang sinasabi mong

pelikula ni Ramon Revilla.

Siguro’y abala lamang ako sa paglalaro

ng taguan,

tumbang preso o habulan

ng mga panahong

naging tuko si Ramon

sa mundong minsa’y pinapasyalan natin

noong mga bata pa tayo.

29 June ‘06

Thursday morning

I arrive in the big kitchen for another day of  work: prepping the dish for foodstyling and photoshoot. Today, I get Chef Gino’s mango-glazed pork recipe. I get the hunk of meat from the kitchen counter where all the pieces of seafood and meat are arranged. I am to cut the pork into big cubes with my newly-honed knife, marinate and deep-fry them. Debbie, a pal in the kitchen, volunteers to prepare the mise-en-place for the sauce: she measures each ingredient individually, puts them in saucers and places them all in a tray, all ready for mixing and cooking.

Mise en place: something that all chefs and aspiring chefs must always practice. Whoever invented it must really be a sucker for order, an OC — but an OC with a great sense of organization. I wonder if Careme started this thing or if it had already been practiced even before he was born. It’s an interesting aspect of culinary history: the beginnings of the mise-en-place. I wonder if anybody could be interested in conducting a research on that..

In between the choppings and sauteeings, we do a little banter and chat across our respective kitchen domains. I help Honey ( a girl from the newer batch) with her binagoongang baboy. Do we follow the recipe instruction and boil it till fork-tender? We are in doubt because there might be a chance that it might end up in our tummies during lunchtime. I text Chef Gino, who replies that it doesn’t have to be softened. “Boil it for only 10-15 minutes,” he says. So we boil it  with all the works: the anise, pepper, and other wood spices enough to make you salivate. But then our chef arrives, sees the stuff simmering with all the spices, and tells us,”Pwedeng hindi nyo na lagyan ng spices kasi pang pictorial lang naman eh.” Okay, bogus food again. Welcome to the world of food styling.

I remember Chef Toto coming to the big kitchen one food styling day, putting his hand on whatever looked edible but not without asking , “Safe ba to?”  Which means, is this dish free of food color, glue, paint and all those stuff your mother would keep in your pantry with all the Albatross disks, detergents and disinfectants? He further remarks, “Nakakatakot (dumampot) pag food styling eh. Lahat na lang, bogus.” Touche.

But that’s what makes the world of food styling more interesting. You get to play with food, something that the child in us would eagerly indulge in. As children, we were taught not to play with food. You play with food, you get reprimanded by THE ADULT. Yet, in the field of food styling, the food is treated as a toy, or more appropriately, a piece of art that takes in the whims of the creative mind – something that can be manipulated and dabbled with so that it not only becomes a visual, but a gustatory delight as well – at least, in the minds of those who would relish on the photos. Meat lacking in color?  Paint it brown. Sauce too thin? Add some gooey liquid to thicken it. Make a slurry. You don’t really have to concoct magical brew to obtain visual perfection in a dish. Just the food stylist’s creativity with a backing of science and of course logic, would do. Add to that the meticulous eye of the food photographer in charge. If we are lucky enough, we get to finish a shoot for a dish for an hour. However, being creatures of the kitchen who have learned to eat, drink and breathe food styling sessions during the last few weeks, we have learned to accept that it takes an average of  two hours to finish a shoot for one dish. Oh, we usually have nine or ten dishes each session. Still, we manage to smile.

We have a wonderful time cooking our staff lunch — gathering all the leftovers to create an exciting, new dish; the chopping of onions causing our eyes to blur, steam rising to our faces, the aromas of the dishes wafting across the entire kitchen; assisting our chefs for the shoot — pouring a bit more sauce to the saucer, chopping more parsley for garnish; sitting around waiting for the shoot to be finished, answering text messages from time to time if we are not so busy. During lunch, we still talk about food with our mouths and bellies full.

And so we cook. And watch. And learn. And life in the research and development team becomes all the more colorful and vibrant as our dishes because not only do we eat what we cook; we learn to treat the food with respect, as a piece of art that requires a splash of creativity, a packing punch of professionalism  and a sprinkling of childlike wonder. We learn that from the artists of the CACS kitchen – our chefs.