Playing with fire

Chef Ed Quimson’s life would make great fodder for a local teleserye: a former dishwasher who was sent by his lola to a chi-chi Spanish cooking school but who instead used his tuition money to live la vida loca around Europe until he ended becoming penniless in the south of France and then eventually became the celebrated chef for restaurants like La Tasca, Via Mare, The Nielsen Tower, the Member’s Lounge of the Philippine Stock Exchange, Giraffe, and Rastro Bistro. After spending years simmering inside kitchens, Chef Ed is just about good enough to eat. Now, if only he could be played by Mark Gil…

During the visit of the San Miguel Great Food Club to Mercato Centrale, a weekend food and organic market in Bonifacio Global City (I hear it’s a pretty good weekend market with an extensive organic market, a large variety of food choices, air-conditioned tents, live entertainment, free Wi-Fi and free admission! I even met one of the organizers. Ampogi), I dragged our seasoned chef — renowned for his “mestizo” style of cooking and an advocate of “slow cooking” — to make kwento about how to flirt with your food, his favorite aphrodisiac, and how it can get really, really hot in the kitchen.

Food Fantasy

PHILIPPINE STAR: Chef Ed, how exactly do you prepare a lip-smacking dish? Is it rocket science? Is it divine intervention? 

CHEF ED QUIMSON: I really can’t say. (Laughs) But all I know is that when you prepare a dish, it’s got to have love and libog (lust)! You need both of these things to come up with something that’s really, really orgasmic.

I worry what happens when you are all left alone with a side of beef. After watching an unhealthy amount of Iron Chef episodes on TV, I have come to the realization that male chefs hold a certain amount of sex appeal versus your basic undomesticated male. Why does cooking give you so much sex appeal? Is it because of your ability to knead dough? To sauté? To handle cutlery? 

Quimson prepared French pork chops stuffed with mushroom duxelles at the Mercato Centrale cooking event in Bonifacio Global City.

I guess it’s because if you want to hit on someone faster, you can make your food more flirtatious.

How do you make food flirtatious? Serve chicken breast with cleavage?

Through the style of cooking and the combination of flavors and ingredients. For example, a pan-grilled fish on top of white truffle mashed potato and dashi (Japanese tuna) broth.

And this dish is flirtatious because you serve it wearing only your apron?

Then your food has to have some libog in the end.

I am scared to ask what type of condiments you use for that.

Libog is when you put the dish in your mouth and the first thing you do is go “MMMMmmmmmmm.”

Chef Ed, please stop. I’m a married man with a wife who is good with cutlery.

When the person eating goes “MMMMMmmm,” that is an automatic Of course! Especially when you cook with a lot of love and care. It will come out in the flavor and taste of the dish. If she knows you went through a hard time in preparing a dish, that’s pogi points for you!

Do you get pogi points also if you lovingly order from a food delivery service? Here is a phone-in question from a man who lacks testicular fortitude: He wants to break up with his girlfriend who has more facial hair than him, but is too petrified to let those words escape his mouth. What type of break-up dish should he offer to her to make up for his lack of fortitude? 

Paksiw.

Paksiw you, too.

Because it’s maasim (sour) and may have ampalaya (bitter melon).

It seems you’ve put a lot of thought into this. 

After years of injecting libog into your cuisine, have you encountered foods that were true aphrodisiacs?

If I look at it that way, then the aphrodisiacs I know could fill up a bible. (Laughs)

I don’t think your bible will get an imprimatur.

But I would say small red onions.

Chef Ed during the San Miguel Great Food Club Market Roadshow: “When you prepare a dish, it’s got to have love and libog (lust).”

(Tomorrow’s headline: DOMs cause shortage in red onion supply. GROs fear for their lives.)

Or perhaps, Chef Ed, you are the true aphrodisiac?

Yun na yun (That’s it)!

You, me and Piolo share the same problem. And lastly, my three female readers want to know, is it truly hotter in the kitchen? Does working in a kitchen make things more sensual for you? Do all the scents and aromas wafting through the air lead to any flambéing outside of the frying pan? 

Definitely! The kitchen is all foreplay! And I guess that’s what I love about it. I guess I’m more or a foreplay person. (Laughs)

The Legion of No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSB): Sigh. That’s as far as we get with ourselves as well.

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For more information on the San Miguel Great Food Club, please visit http://www.mygreatfood.com/.

Visit Mercato Centrale (www.mercatocentrale.ph), a great weekend food and organic market at the corner of 34th street and 8th avenue, beside MC Home Depot in The Fort/Bonifacio Global City. Mercato Cenrale is open every Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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For comments, suggestions or some paksiw, please e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail. Follow rjled on Twitter.