Great Asian food? It’s all in the sauce

The idea was straight out of The Iron Chef: get four guest chefs to prepare a 10-course meal, each utilizing a Maggi food product (well, except for dessert, which used Carnation coco evap milk), all prepared live before our hungry gazes.

The setting was The Good Earth at Global City, Fort Bonifacio, and the event was a "culinary concerto" dubbed Taste of Asia and put on by Nestlé Philippines Inc., which imports Maggi products, in addition to Carnation and Nestea.

Maggi has long been the popular choice of moms and dads in the home kitchen – or what is known as the "in-home" market. But did you know Maggi is also used more and more in hotels like Shangri-La, at restaurants in El Nido and Tagaytay Highlands, and even mid-air on Philippine Airlines flights? This is the "out-of-home" market, and Maggi has been reaching out to it with new sauces and old favorites that make food prep a little easier – and definitely a lot tastier.

It’s not surprising that Asian chefs – like many busy people today – face a culinary quandary in the kitchen: how to prepare great sauces without spending hours and hours slaving over a hot wok?

Well, Maggi, one of Asia’s most popular flavor enhancers, provided an answer last Thursday in a demonstration of just how well their products work with Asian cuisine. Nestlé Foodservices marketing manager Marissa R. Yap said the event was to launch two new Maggi products – abalone sauce and Thai chili sauce – and to give special guests a chance to see Maggi products in action. Plus, obviously, to enjoy a great meal, which we did.

Taste of Asia enlisted four top chefs from around Asia – Malaysian chef See Cheong Yan, currently the executive chef of Tagaytay Highlands restaurants; Filipino chef and Center for Culinary Arts Asian Cuisine instructor Bong Ignacio; chef Penk Ching, owner of Pastry Bin; and Singaporean chef Roy Wai Ng, head Chinese chef for Macroasia-Eurest Inflight Catering for Hot Production – to cook for guests from the restaurant industry (such as Chow King), members of the Caterers Association of the Philippines, and the media.

Understandably, those who arrived early and glimpsed the menu – which included superior chicken dumpling soup, chili prawns, steamed tofu with shiitake mushrooms, stir-fried beef with asparagus, sautéed fish with pine nuts, stewed spare ribs, and chicken chow mein – already had their appetites primed to the max. Fortunately, we were able to keep hunger at bay with fried lobster balls, machang and sesame sticks dipped in Maggi chili sauce and mustard, along with glass after glass of Nestea’s Serenity green tea, also imported by Nestlé Philippines, until the main event began.

But first, a pageant. Taking us by surprise, Chinese gongs announced the arrival of two colorful Chinese dragons (each costume operated by a pair of limber men, one riding on the other’s shoulders), which entertained the crowd with a ceremonial dance. We watched as the dragons cavorted in their glittering green and fuchsia costumes, then marched up the stairs of The Good Earth, where they wrestled with a yellow-costumed man in a Chinese mask. Safe to say, none of us saw this coming.

When we recovered, the cooking demo began. With the help of comely host Asia Agcaoili, chef See began preparing the dumplings right before our tables. He used Maggi’s concentrated chicken stock as the basis of his soup – adding white pepper, cinnamon bark, asparagus and star anise. The Maggi stock definitely added an authentic flavor to the dumpling soup, with the fresh pork dumplings plump and delicious. The Maggi also added a kick to the pandan-scented rice served with the meal.

Demonstrating the Maggi oyster sauce, chef Bong whipped up delicious steamed tofu, stir-fried with shiitake mushrooms. However you feel about tofu as a dish, the oyster sauce really brought the mushrooms alive, and added a distinctly Asian dimension to the dish. His other specialty using the oyster sauce was chicken chow mein, using fresh egg noodles, chicken breast, celery, leeks, black beans and a combination of Maggi chicken stock (straight from the bottle) and oyster sauce. You could smell it cooking from across the restaurant. Served before us hot and steaming, it was even better: I had about three servings.

To try out the Maggi Thai chili sauce, chef Roy whipped up some prawns braised in the sauce. The Maggi made the prawns sweeter than you might expect of a restaurant dish, but the entrée was the favorite of many guests. Maybe it’s the Filipino taste for sweetness. The prawns, fresh and juicy, got a nice bite from the fried garlic as well.

Testing out the new Maggi abalone sauce, chef Roy also prepared a hearty lapu-lapu fillet, sautéed in dried mushrooms and olive oil. Here, we got to taste how a real chef might adopt a Maggi sauce to his own tastes: he customized his abalone sauce with pine nuts, ginger juice and whisked egg white.

Personally, abalone is not a dish I seek out in Chinese restaurants; if it’s there, I’ll have a small piece, just to add to the flavor variety. And that’s the beauty of Maggi’s abalone sauce: it adds an exotic flavor to an otherwise neutral fish dish. Served with the stir-fried beef, it also adds a hint of seafood flavor to an otherwise Western dish. Highly recommended.

Imported from Malaysia, the abalone sauce promises to be a favorite with local chefs. Abalone is a costly ingredient, but Maggi’s team found a way to extract the flavor and preserve it for mass consumption. In addition, the sauce adds a glossy, golden-brown color to dishes, according to Nestlé Food Services marketing manager A.D. Macatangay.

We ended our meal with a fitting concoction – pandan jelly with coconut sorbet, topped with dollops of Carnation coco evap milk by chef Penk. This was striking, especially with the dry ice wafting up chilled smoke around the heaping bowl of long, green pandan chunks.

All in all, the night proved that Maggi isn’t just for home kitchens, but for show kitchens as well.

"We wanted to showcase our culinary products that will offer convenience for chefs, who are really artists," said Manny T. Parroco, Nestlé’s business executive manager for the Food Services Unit. "We want to make it easier for them by offering new tastes that they can adapt and add to their own creations."

The menu was definitely full of creative surprises.

"The first challenge in a restaurant is to make your product consistent," adds Parroco. "For caterers and chefs, we offer that consistency. But as chefs – as artists – we also offer you tastes that will attract your customers."

Taste of Asia was where East successfully met West at the popular Good Earth restaurant, but it was also something else, says Parroco: "Tonight was something special, because we brought together chefs and caterers to many restaurants, so they could get to know each other."

And, who knows? Maybe even trade a few kitchen secrets.