The Master Baker Nick Malgieri
May 24th, 2008Visited 261 times, 2 so far today
Never thought that after trying my very best to get his classes in Institute of Culinary Education, it is here in Manila that I will finally meet and see the great Nick Malgieri demonstrate cakes and pastry doughs. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, through the kindness of Food and Foodie Magazine yours truly, was invited to witness in the flesh the great master at work. He has been an idol ever since I worked with Jill Sandique who was also trained by Chef Malgieri. She also has not enough words to describe the experience. My first actual exposure to him is through his book, How to Bake, which I believe was already his third or fourth cookbook. I have also used extensively quite a number of his recipes in the Perfect Cake which has the best looking pictures any cookbook has ever had.
The event was this year’s Master Class Series from Food Magazine who started bringing in chefs from the US. The past few years it has been Delores Custer demonstrating Food Styling which is an area in the food business rarely taught here in the country. The first day he demonstrated interesting cakes and on the second day, a lot of different pastry doughs, both sweet and savory plus some chocolate truffles. It was quite interesting since most of the cakes were not that simple but more specialized especially on technique or method. It also reaffirms to a baker or pastry chef if whatever he has been accustomed to do is correct or not, since the science which is integral to baking is also discussed.
Chef Nick was very friendly and moved through the crowd before the start of the seminar, so I had the chance to introduce myself and acknowledge how big an idol I am of him. The seminar flow was very smooth, I had my share of people going to my table to say their greetings but specials friend who I have not seen for the past five months suddenly resurfaced, Bambi, owner of Kooky and Luscious and Pia Y Damaso was invited by Magnolia Butter, to watch the chef in action. We talked about how life has been since she opened another outlet and our common friends who I haven’t seen for quite some time. At the end of each day, there was inquiry part where once could ask anything about baking which I could relate to and learn from. Also, the best part of the event is still the cake and pastry tasting. Although the first day sampling was quite minute, it was enough to conclude that the baked goods were meticulously made. We had a ton of samplings on the second day since I had with me on my table some very important people….for me to know and for you not to ask…….hahaha……Food and Foodie Magazines as well as other food related publications should bring more foreign chefs for us to learn from and converge on a topic that everyone loves to discuss.
Bookmark at:StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Dzone | Newsvine | Spurl | Simpy | Furl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb
