Beginner’s luck
June 1, 2006 | 12:00am
Winner, Lifestyle Journalism Awards 2006 sponsored by The Philippine Star,
Stores Specialists, and HSBC.
Annette Beley has collected as many cookbooks as she has Agatha Christie novels down the years. "My two passions – writing and cooking – come together in such a positive way." Beley’s love for writing began at UP where she took AB Journalism and "thoroughly enjoyed it because one of my professors was the inimitable Louie Beltran." Her love for cooking began when "my father sealed my fate when he showed me how to whip up a mean spaghetti meat sauce he learned to cook from an American-Italian classmate at the University of Pennsylvania."
He set the first dish before me with equal parts pride and anxiety. If one could go by appearance and aroma alone, he needn’t have worried. Seldom had I seen eggs cooked to such a moist and fluffy state, the golden mound redolent with the aromatic scents of butter, garlic, basil, and thyme. Not bad for a first-timer. Not bad at all.
It was an epiphany for my eldest son when he realized he was interested in the culinary arts. Midway through his second year in college, he discovered that he enjoyed watching TV cooking shows with me. That he was fascinated by the endless possibilities in pasta sauces and the various combinations of herbs, spices and sundry other flavorings. So he asked me to teach him and I said we’d start with the basics.
One of the basics was egg cookery. I told him so many cooks ruined perfectly good eggs by frying them over much too high heat or boiling them too long. He also wanted to know how to make fried rice so he could whip up something for himself any time of the day. So we got into rice cookery as well.
I suppose it was inevitable. My father’s mother had been a wonderful cook and I recall spending many a lazy morning in her kitchen watching her cook.
Her kitchen wasn’t anything grand or fancy. It wasn’t even in the house. It looked like a three-sided shed lit by two fluorescent bulbs. It was made of concrete, had a corrugated metal roof and was situated in the back of the house across a cemented courtyard. It was what we called a "dirty kitchen," something quite common in many homes, at the time.
Not that it was filthy or unsanitary. But placing the kitchen outside the house guaranteed that there would be a minimum of pests in the main living area and the smells of cooking would not end up clinging to everything and everyone. After all, this was in the days before stove top exhaust fans. Besides, preparing most meals in the dirty kitchen spared the indoor kitchen from excessive wear and tear and, therefore, guaranteed it would always be presentable especially when there were guests in the house.
My grandmother’s kitchen was long and narrow and very simple. She had a small two-burner table top gas stove, a recent concession to modernity; previously she had cooked over a kalan, a wood-burning stove. There was also a utilitarian sink, a weathered wooden table where the food was prepared, narrow shelves on which reposed various pots and pans and utensils, an old standing electric fan and a rattan chair in which she could rest while waiting for soups and stews to finish cooking. Strangely enough, the refrigerator and electric oven (she also loved to bake) remained in the house’s indoor kitchen, which was used more frequently as a breakfast nook than a place where food was actually cooked.
I associated my grandparents’ home with good food and boundless hospitality. There was never a visit that didn’t end with my grandfather sitting us, their grandchildren, around either the old Formica breakfast table or the more formal dining table of dark polished wood and my grandmother serving us mouthwatering dishes running the gamut from the simple to the lavish.
If it was a holiday, there was sure to be her wonderful pancit molo. Or she would prepare our favorite chicken dish in which she marinated the bird in calamansi juice and Japanese soy sauce then baked it, basting the chicken once in a while with butter and drippings. Another favorite was lumpiang sariwa. And we could never resist her halayang ube, which was never too sweet, had a rich buttery flavor, and retained a few whole bits just to keep it interesting.
(Her house was a favorite destination during the annual town fiesta. Her neighbors, discerning folk, knew a good thing when they saw it. Or in this case, tasted it.)
But even her everyday dishes were enough to make us linger at the table. Her sinigang was neither too sour nor bland. Her chicken and pork adobo would ensnare my hamburger-loving brothers without fail. And to satisfy my grandfather’s sweet tooth, she concocted her own version of bread pudding, using the lowly pandesal instead of sliced white bread.
In my grandmother’s hands, even fried canned vienna sausages tasted better than anyone else’s did. Especially when eaten with freshly baked bread that my grandfather bought from the bakery across the street from their house. To this day, I have never managed to fry vienna sausages to that same state of perfection and neither has anyone else for that matter. Incredible how so apparently simple a result should prove so difficult to attain.
Looking back, I realized that more than just skill and knowledge made my grandmother’s food memorable. It was also the atmosphere in her home. It was an atmosphere born of the great love and respect my grandparents had for each other. And they had so much of both that it naturally spilled over onto all their children and grandchildren. It may sound ridiculous, but I think that’s the reason everything tasted so much better there than anything we’d try elsewhere.
Though she passed away when Bryan was only two years old, he must have inherited some of her cooking genes, as we would put it. My father did. So had I, the rest of my family claims. And now, my son seemed to be following in our culinary footsteps.
So here it was one midnight in the middle of the week, the result of his initial lessons. Aside from the scrambled eggs, he’d also created a fried rice dish using leftovers he found in the refrigerator. Pork and chicken adobo bits, sautéed string beans and carrots, soy sauce and prepared teriyaki marinade, and just enough beaten eggs to bind the whole delicious mess together.
He was proud of his efforts. He did not just plop everything down on the table but ladled the eggs and rice onto individual plates for the two of us. He set the table and stirred up iced tea and then we sat down to a sumptuous midnight repast.
Who would have thought a meal of eggs and rice could be so utterly perfect? But as I sat back with a replete sigh, it occurred to me that my son had made good use of certain special ingredients not found on any shelf or bought in any store.
An instinct for combining flavors ranked high on the list. A knack for mixing colors and textures also counted. And pride in one’s craft, too. Now, what else was lacking? Oh yes, the most precious spice of all had been mixed in with a lavish hand. Love.
Could there be a more perfect meal than the product of a genuine labor of love?
Stores Specialists, and HSBC.
Annette Beley has collected as many cookbooks as she has Agatha Christie novels down the years. "My two passions – writing and cooking – come together in such a positive way." Beley’s love for writing began at UP where she took AB Journalism and "thoroughly enjoyed it because one of my professors was the inimitable Louie Beltran." Her love for cooking began when "my father sealed my fate when he showed me how to whip up a mean spaghetti meat sauce he learned to cook from an American-Italian classmate at the University of Pennsylvania."
He set the first dish before me with equal parts pride and anxiety. If one could go by appearance and aroma alone, he needn’t have worried. Seldom had I seen eggs cooked to such a moist and fluffy state, the golden mound redolent with the aromatic scents of butter, garlic, basil, and thyme. Not bad for a first-timer. Not bad at all.
It was an epiphany for my eldest son when he realized he was interested in the culinary arts. Midway through his second year in college, he discovered that he enjoyed watching TV cooking shows with me. That he was fascinated by the endless possibilities in pasta sauces and the various combinations of herbs, spices and sundry other flavorings. So he asked me to teach him and I said we’d start with the basics.
One of the basics was egg cookery. I told him so many cooks ruined perfectly good eggs by frying them over much too high heat or boiling them too long. He also wanted to know how to make fried rice so he could whip up something for himself any time of the day. So we got into rice cookery as well.
I suppose it was inevitable. My father’s mother had been a wonderful cook and I recall spending many a lazy morning in her kitchen watching her cook.
Her kitchen wasn’t anything grand or fancy. It wasn’t even in the house. It looked like a three-sided shed lit by two fluorescent bulbs. It was made of concrete, had a corrugated metal roof and was situated in the back of the house across a cemented courtyard. It was what we called a "dirty kitchen," something quite common in many homes, at the time.
Not that it was filthy or unsanitary. But placing the kitchen outside the house guaranteed that there would be a minimum of pests in the main living area and the smells of cooking would not end up clinging to everything and everyone. After all, this was in the days before stove top exhaust fans. Besides, preparing most meals in the dirty kitchen spared the indoor kitchen from excessive wear and tear and, therefore, guaranteed it would always be presentable especially when there were guests in the house.
My grandmother’s kitchen was long and narrow and very simple. She had a small two-burner table top gas stove, a recent concession to modernity; previously she had cooked over a kalan, a wood-burning stove. There was also a utilitarian sink, a weathered wooden table where the food was prepared, narrow shelves on which reposed various pots and pans and utensils, an old standing electric fan and a rattan chair in which she could rest while waiting for soups and stews to finish cooking. Strangely enough, the refrigerator and electric oven (she also loved to bake) remained in the house’s indoor kitchen, which was used more frequently as a breakfast nook than a place where food was actually cooked.
I associated my grandparents’ home with good food and boundless hospitality. There was never a visit that didn’t end with my grandfather sitting us, their grandchildren, around either the old Formica breakfast table or the more formal dining table of dark polished wood and my grandmother serving us mouthwatering dishes running the gamut from the simple to the lavish.
If it was a holiday, there was sure to be her wonderful pancit molo. Or she would prepare our favorite chicken dish in which she marinated the bird in calamansi juice and Japanese soy sauce then baked it, basting the chicken once in a while with butter and drippings. Another favorite was lumpiang sariwa. And we could never resist her halayang ube, which was never too sweet, had a rich buttery flavor, and retained a few whole bits just to keep it interesting.
(Her house was a favorite destination during the annual town fiesta. Her neighbors, discerning folk, knew a good thing when they saw it. Or in this case, tasted it.)
But even her everyday dishes were enough to make us linger at the table. Her sinigang was neither too sour nor bland. Her chicken and pork adobo would ensnare my hamburger-loving brothers without fail. And to satisfy my grandfather’s sweet tooth, she concocted her own version of bread pudding, using the lowly pandesal instead of sliced white bread.
In my grandmother’s hands, even fried canned vienna sausages tasted better than anyone else’s did. Especially when eaten with freshly baked bread that my grandfather bought from the bakery across the street from their house. To this day, I have never managed to fry vienna sausages to that same state of perfection and neither has anyone else for that matter. Incredible how so apparently simple a result should prove so difficult to attain.
Looking back, I realized that more than just skill and knowledge made my grandmother’s food memorable. It was also the atmosphere in her home. It was an atmosphere born of the great love and respect my grandparents had for each other. And they had so much of both that it naturally spilled over onto all their children and grandchildren. It may sound ridiculous, but I think that’s the reason everything tasted so much better there than anything we’d try elsewhere.
Though she passed away when Bryan was only two years old, he must have inherited some of her cooking genes, as we would put it. My father did. So had I, the rest of my family claims. And now, my son seemed to be following in our culinary footsteps.
So here it was one midnight in the middle of the week, the result of his initial lessons. Aside from the scrambled eggs, he’d also created a fried rice dish using leftovers he found in the refrigerator. Pork and chicken adobo bits, sautéed string beans and carrots, soy sauce and prepared teriyaki marinade, and just enough beaten eggs to bind the whole delicious mess together.
He was proud of his efforts. He did not just plop everything down on the table but ladled the eggs and rice onto individual plates for the two of us. He set the table and stirred up iced tea and then we sat down to a sumptuous midnight repast.
Who would have thought a meal of eggs and rice could be so utterly perfect? But as I sat back with a replete sigh, it occurred to me that my son had made good use of certain special ingredients not found on any shelf or bought in any store.
An instinct for combining flavors ranked high on the list. A knack for mixing colors and textures also counted. And pride in one’s craft, too. Now, what else was lacking? Oh yes, the most precious spice of all had been mixed in with a lavish hand. Love.
Could there be a more perfect meal than the product of a genuine labor of love?
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