Chefie’s World

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I am in the Bangkok Airport waiting for my flight back to Manila. I’ve been here since 11:30 in the morning, my original flight was cancelled due to some sorth of cloudiness and radar error in Manila. I don’t know if this is true. My friends tell me that the plane doesn’t have enough passengers to leave from Manila so it opted to stay. I don’t really know what else to do..an option was to leave with the other passengers and stay in a hotel nearby but I don’t want to go to the process of having to line up again and wait. The airport is clean and free not much people and I get to sleep with my carry on which I have in a trolley. My carry on is a bit heavy, it has my manual…oh the reason I am here is to study again, Im in such a crazy mode of studying, took a Frozen Dough Course with US Wheat Associates and wow, a big amount of knowledge was just shared to me…realizing that it might help me in my career…don’t really know…I just want a less monotonous life of just teaching and teaching…..this is my third trip to Thailand this year, was here last March, then May when all hell broke loose and no place to go except that I was so anxious to go home and this June –July…I felt so fulfilled though since I can really go around Thailand and not get lost, shopping, sightseeing or just plain eating. Although the end wasn’t as nice as the two weeks, I still got to eat really good food. Food on the street, hawker’s but not as much as before since due to the warm weather, I was scared of getting a bad stomach. I had the best coconut cookies, made from coconut cream, rice flour and sugar, made in a hot plate with holes on it like the Japanese squid balls one sees in the groceries. This one was really very good, full of flavour with a crispy outside and a soft kutchinta like filling, I can finish 20 in one snap, I had it continuously for three days and then the ago go went haywire in my lean stomach. I had the best pizzas too in Bella Napoli….with good, old friends Thierry and Borris who have been here in Bangkok for three years teaching in a French school. Enjoyed eating in my two favourite restaurants, Vanilla Brasserie in Siam Paragon and Greyhound in Emporium, love their food and presentations. When one day you decide to go to Bangkok, bring me along, a good guide for all that’s worth doing. My flight leaves in three – four hours so I will write more until my battery goes bye bye.

Some of the most rewarding and beautiful moments of a friendship happen in the unforeseen open spaces between planned activities. It is important that we allow these spaces to exist. For with this time that we venture alone, we learn other facets and lessons in life that break us, repair us, enrich us and make us stand proud. And those times of absence and space, give us more depth of character, wisdom of experience and hence enable us to share more in our meeting “again”.

Sent by a dear close friend….
My blog is my way of building my friendship with you, my readers. Thank you….

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Finally, they have arrived, after many sleepless months, thinking and dreaming on what ever happened to my balikbayan boxes, it came in yesterday, April 14…my, my, my…..one of the boxes left November 21, 2009 the others a week after I left America. So what happened…well, they had a problem with shipping them before Christmas so it just stayed in New Jersey until first week of February, maybe nobody wanted to send it to America. Then upon arrival here first week of March, it had some more weeks in the Customs warehouse for another round of waiting due to some freight charges problem. My trainers who asked me to buy Al Pacino Scarface shoes and Puma slip ons waited so long for them as well as nephew, Eric for his Nike walking shoes. So here they are…sleepless nights yes, since it has a lot of pastry and baking books, some worth 300 dollars – classic no longer printed and the Spanish dessert books not available here – Torreblanca, Adria, Morato the latest books for desserts…then I have over 20 chocolate molds for a new business I will let you know about soon. Aside from my old clothes and underwear that still smells so good…sarap ng amoy ng galing US….amoy mabangon, one you can’t even describe…basta alam mo lang galing America. I have my old reliable Dr.Martens walking shoes there and my favourite wool sweater that I wear for winter or when it’s just too cold. The boxes came well sealed and nothing happened to them. Masaya na ako….I can sleep now….peacefully after I fix all of these abundance…

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The system of cooking and baking has to be really organized….that is what baking has taught me. There has to be an organized plan to do everything. This again, I learned recently after a 8 day course with Chef Eric Perez in Bangkok…Macaron Pastry Training Center started some 2 years ago, he wanted to share his more than 20 years of hotel pastry and dessert work to everyone in Asia. I have gone through training with him for the USDA Council of Chefs and he showed me how efficient and well knowledgeable he is of his chosen work…One of the best in the world for me….very well synchronize, everything just flowing, how I wish I could continue going through training with him. At least it is not as far as America and not as expensive. I was very fortunate that I we were only two in most of the classes so I got him with all the attention that I needed.
Bangkok was especially very warm and hot, I would walk everyday for the first 4 days since early morning is not as horrible as the afternoons when the heat was boiling. I learned so much. Wish you can join me when I come back.

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It’s middle of March and I am still writing about events that happened middle of February but I have to share this with all my readers. I had all these for breakfast last Valentine’s day and each is a representation of the comfort food I truly enjoy. My pork barbecue with java rice and Reyes atchara from Alex III, cereals with my lactose free skim milk and pinipig suman from Rosalie’s of Marilao, Bulacan that my student Nanette gives me….sarap….and I can finish that in 20 – 30 minutes. I always have a very heavy breakfast since I have the whole day to burn it. Now that I also work out almost everyday, I know and feel it will be gone as I daily work activities….but you know, my food pyramid is inverted, if I eat this for breakfast, I can skip lunch but will eat a full and heavy dinner. So that’s another reason why I sleep later than late.

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the crepe cake and flourless chocolate cake

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the brunch host – elephant group leaders

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allan’s eggs benedict

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the brunch spread

My favourite photographer sent me a message, let ‘s have a pre-valentine brunch at his place, he will be cooking…Allan Tuazon and his wife, Irene are hosting with Pam, Dexter, and Jenn. The Elephant group since we are all as big as baby elephants, I just wrote baby so guess our sizes. I was assigned to bring dessert and I just finally realized that a crepe cake would be the best to bring from Mara de la Rama, simply divine but I wanted to bring one more and Mara recommended her flourless chocolate cake. Excited and hungry, got to Allan’s place with the best tasting desserts, I was first and Allan was busy in the kitchen….we had double cooked tapa, eggs Benedict on whole wheat pandesal instead of English muffins, Vegetable and Mushroom Omelette, Adobo rice and Freshly squeezed orange juice, he even had Carabao Milk Leche Flan, grabe pang elepante talaga ang meal naman, Ang sarap….specially with friends. See and savour the pictures…..

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who are these kids read my first blog and find out….

The great things of having the Gavino kids being not too young or old, their uncle can hang along with them and I think they enjoy the company of an aging, comical and trendy tito, Chefie…hehehe but the best part is that now they are grown and working they treat you out and give you amazing gifts. Before Christmas, I mentioned that I really like this cooler that I see the Top Chef contestant use during their out of kitchen functions and then forgot about it. Christmas Eve 2009 came and arrived, just after midnite, JL comes pulling something with him and there it was, the Coleman’s Ultimate Extreme 6 day Cooler, will keep ice at 90 degrees for 6 days, can fit 72 cans of drinks as well as 50 quarts of whatever you want…it has wheels to move as you carry one of the sides…I love it..and I was overjoyed and cried when I got it. I cooked for this kids and made their baptisms and birthdays extra special…now it’s pay back time. I enjoy being with them and the people they love…watch Pinoy, gigil, gigil movies…eewww, just last night we got to see, “ ginawa mo kasing SYOTA ang bestfriend mo, ginawa mong SYOTA ako….
But the real joy is knowing how important I am to them, and whatever happens they love me just the way I am…

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Yes, after such a long time of hibernation, what could I possibly be doing now….I ‘ve been so busy with work work and more work. This has been my everlasting reason to all of you for not writing a post for the past six –seven months. Students have complained, people at Yummy mag still has the caption to go to my blog which doesn’t have anything new to read about. The world started to get harder and harder, there was just so much opportunities that I had to do since age has a way of slowing you down. I don’t even know how long until my next posting but when the time comes for me to write, I do that immediately and not procrastinate.

What’s new with life? Well for one thing, Shiny the car has been changed to Mocha the SUV, if you are following this blog, I once wrote the Shiny was getting old and was getting too sickly so I decided to get a new vehicle and an SUV was just the right choice. Can you imagine how it would have been, so hard for me to move around after the Ondoy typhoon that swept Manila? but that is another story to write about. I am happy that the car runs on diesel and gives a better mileage than Shiny but bigger in size, harder to park, but with Apol around who needs parking?..hehehe.
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With over three months of preparation, this dinner for 350 persons sit down plated 8 course for the benefit of my student’s movie Ploning was one of my most exciting events to do. The whole school with batch 18 MWF AM class and some from the PM class were part of the three day preparation and actual dinner.

A few weeks before the dinner, I volunteered myself to Gino that I could do the chocolate pralines for the dinner and he obliged, giving me full responsibility with it. With Toto in command and heading the catering team, I knew that it would just flow through with all his experience in big functions here and in Davao, he was the right choice. But he did give me another responsibility which was creating the dessert from what was given by Chef Gene. I tested three different cakes with a variation of amounts with regard to black pepper. Oh by the way the dessert would be three components….a flourless black pepper chocolate cake, tomato ice cream with balsamic cream and poached pears with coffee mascarpone stuffing….it would be good together and individually, one blending just right with the other. I was also assigned to be the leader in plating this dessert which I eagerly said yes to.

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