Bachelor Cooking

Do you know how to cook? As for me, I don’t.

Cooking is one of my life’s greatest frustrations. Like most of my male friends, I grew up in a typical family where the women cook and the guys do the mechanical work then afterwards devour whatever is served at the dining table. I am clueless on how it was prepared and sometimes I could not even remember what the recipe is called.

Talking about the typical guy right? Let’s face it gents, most of us think that cooking is for women. But have you ever wondered why most chefs are dudes? I ask myself the same question everytime I dine in at high-end restaurants.

Through the years, I realized all the disadvantages of not being able to know how to prepare even a single dish. Think about this: I find it really expensive to live in a bachelor pad because aside from paying the rent and utilities, I would need to buy food outside which amounts to approximately 9,000 Pesos a month. It is more costly and not as healthy as home-cooked meal.

So two weeks ago, I decided to start changing all that by attending demo classes and workshops at Moderne Culinaire Academy with a good friend of mine. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I am not dreaming of becoming a professional chef, I just wanted to learn a few recipes and to get a feel of cooking.

The school is a brand new four-storey building. It is located near TESDA in the south of the Metro and it was founded by the best chefs in the industry like Chefs Raymar Reyes and Bernardino Guingona. If you happen to watch TV5, you would see Chef Raymar doing some kind of a demo cooking there on their morning show.

There were three workshop cooking classes scheduled on the day that we went to MCA. There was a baking class, a salad-making class and an entree class. My friend and I ended up taking the entree class first with celebrity Chef Raymar Reyes. It was such a courageous move for me and my friend who knew nothing about cooking.

As the chef started to demo his entree recipe for us, my friend and I began to feel a little lost. He suddenly tossed the ingredients here and there and then started to talk about heavy cooking terms like saute, simmer and zest to name a few. All of our classmates seemed to understand what he was saying. We didn’t. To cut the story short, my friend and I had a nosebleed.

The chef operated the gas stove as if he was playing magic in the reality TV show Pilipinas Got Talent. The flame of the stove jumped to the frying pan and the room lit up bright orange. It was amazing and impressive to see what Chef Raymar was doing. He’s an expert.

Twenty-five minutes and a nosebleed later, the demo was over and it was time for us to taste the entree that we have been preparing the whole time. Mind you, it is not an ordinary recipe you will see anywhere. Chef Raymar actually invented it. It is made up of some fish called seabass with a twist of red wine in its flavor. And you know what? It tasted so damn good.

Now after the entree class, we attended the Ceasar salad making class which is good for beginners like us. We also went to the baking class where students were taught how to make macaroons. And guess who we met?

Yup, that’s Bangs Garcia with me. She was our classmate and she really has a sweet smile in person.

We ended the day with bartending classes. It was fun.

The day after the workshops, I could hardly remember anything except the Caesar salad and a few bartending skills. Perhaps we needed more hands-on and I guess we had really gone overboard by attending too many complicated workshops in a single day. Add to that is the fact that we were a bit distracted by Bangs Garcia. LOL.

But I am not giving up. It was my first time to go to a culinary class and it’s just a demo workshop so I’ll have to try simpler recipes next time at Moderne Culinaire Academy and also ask my relatives and female friends to teach me too. Let’s see how it goes.

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