A challenge to celebrity chefs

There are only two dishes I can cook: Bacon spaghetti without sauce and overstuffed omelet.

Spaghetti without sauce? Yes. This is how you do it: Fry a pack of bacon in a pan. When the strips are close to getting crispy, take out the bacon and set aside. In a bowl, beat four eggs and dump cooked spaghetti noodles in it.

After each strand had been coated with the egg mixture, pour it into the pan where you cooked the bacon. Fry the noodles and throw the bacon back in  plus red and green bell pepper to add color.

The overstuffed omelet is even less complicated to make: In a pan, fry potato strips cut a la French fries. Before it turns brown, throw in sliced hotdogs, diced carrots and turnips and peas.

Between the two dishes, I’ve had more success with the overstuffed omelet. In an old cooking show hosted by CB Garrucho, I cooked both and the spaghetti with bacon (an original recipe by Charito Solis) was a disaster. Not even the food doctors on the set could save it.

But the overstuffed omelet was a smashing success. The dish also turned out to be telegenic after it was decorated with ketchup. In my next on-cam cooking adventure  in Dina Bonnevie’s show then on GMA 7  the staff asked me for an encore after the first take and made me cook some more for them. That was also the same dish I cooked in Spoon and even chef Janice de Belen gave it the thumbs-up.

However, now that I recently vowed to start eating healthy, I bow my head in shame. Sharing with viewers those two recipes that called for frying (even the supposedly healthy carrots were fried!) was a disservice to the public.

How I wish our celebrity chefs could rethink their culinary styles and start sharing healthful recipes. In due fairness to them, there are some chefs (one is Scandinavian), who also stress the importance of eating healthy.

But the rest  they try to slowly kill their audiences with butter, sugar and pork fat. I call them the criminal chefs.

Sometime ago, the Lifestyle section of this paper featured a new TV host-chef who shared in the article a dish he concocted that he is extremely proud of  pork tenderloin stuffed with pork longganisa and wrapped in pork bacon.

Holding the paper with my left hand, I almost reached out for phone to dial the number of Cardinal Santos Memorial Hospital. Just reading that piece made me this close to having a heart attack.

Last month, a local hotel also welcomed a celebrity chef from abroad known for greening otherwise sinful dishes. He tried to green our kare-kare, but I was disappointed when I found out that all he did was trim the fat off the oxtail. They flew him over for that?

A favorite cooking show of mine had always been the Iron Chef where the likes of Mario Batali and Bobby Flay compete with each other using a key ingredient (wild mushroom, salmon, cheese, etc.) that they are supposed to use from soup to dessert.   

Maybe somebody could come up with a cooking show where the contest revolves around making dishes that are healthy and still appetizing. The lesser calories, the more points they will win.

 I know I am being a spoilsport again with this piece. You can say life is short  let’s enjoy it. I am aware that I am taking the fun out of bonding moments that always include food.

It’s such a joy eating with friends and especially family. But really  do you want to burden your loved ones eventually with your health problems? The expenses and taking care of whatever is left of you?

And so here is a challenge I am posing to celebrity chefs. Maybe they should also start feeling responsible and start experimenting with dishes that are delicious and yet friendly to the heart, blood pressure and the waistline.

I know that food is always part of most celebrations. But it is also part of mourning. After all, ham sandwiches (make that with mayo) are the easiest to prepare and pass around during wakes at funeral parlors.