Sabrina Artadi: From ‘queen of the ramp’ to ‘queen of the kitchen’

So what do beauty queens do when their reign is over?

Some retreat into domesticity, some venture into showbiz as actresses or TV hosts, some go abroad to pursue the proverbial greener pasture and some extend their reign to another field like Sabrina Artadi who ruled the ramp as Bb. Pilipinas-International in 1985 (and the country’s bet in that same year’s Miss International pageant) and now happily presides as Queen of the Kitchen of her own home.

Called the Philippines’ Nigella Lawson (famous journalist who writes about food), she hosts her cooking show Sabrina’s Kitchen on the Asian Food Channel with mouth-watering-inducing and tummy-filling recipes she has learned (and improved) from her travels abroad, cooking them from a non-chef point of view. “If I can do it, so can you. I want to bring everything to the kitchen,” because the best way to any person’s heart is through his/her stomach, “I want to bring families together.”

In Meralco’s Bright Ideas feature, Sabrina recalled that she lived in the Middle East for two years.

“I loved the food, the architecture, the clothing, the ingredients, the spices,” she gushed. “I would go into the local kitchens and experience home cooking. The tips and the tricks were a great, great blessing for me. I would also go to bodegas in Spain and eat unadulterated food, not restaurant or hotel food, not commercialized. I learned from non-chefs whose inspiration is usually their lola’s food, their mother’s food, their nanny’s cooking, or street-hawker food.”

Sabrina has compiled her recipes in her book Glam Cookbook (A Sabrina’s kitchen adventure of family bonding and love through food). For more information, go to these websites: www.sabrinaartadi.com…www.facebook.com/officialsabrinaskitchen…www.facebook.com/Sabrinas-Kitchen…www.twitter.com/SabrinaArtadi.

Being a single parent, Sabrina said that she has to be practical and she advises women to do the same.

She uses gadgets that help her save 40 to 50 percent on energy and electricity, one of them the Induction Heat (IH) cooker. “The first time I tried it, I was amazed by how much time and energy I saved,” revealed Sabrina. “Cooking paella used to take me 45 minutes but with IH cooker, I could do it in only 25 minutes.”

The IH cooker, according to Sabrina, also allows water to boil quickly. “It’s user-friendly. It’s very safe and doesn’t emit heat. It cooks the food very evenly and you only use low temperature. It’s really very efficient.”

There. If you want to cook the Sabrina Artadi way, follow her tip.

Actor ‘drowns’ in a glass of water

Here’s a classic case of too much, too soon. Or, as they call it in showbiz lingo, nalunod sa isang basong tubig (drowned in a glass of water), roughly translated as getting prematurely swell-headed.

The Funfare informer won’t say for what movie this new actor won an award or when; all she said is that the morning after the actor’s victory, his manager (an influential person in the international-filmfest circuit) called him but the actor never answered the phone, not even after repeated calls from the manager who later received a text message from the actor: If you don’t have any career plan for me, lilipat ako (ng manager).

“The nerve!” fumed the informer who is the manager’s good friend. “Has he forgotten that he was included in the cast of several pictures through the recommendation of his manager who is a friend of the directors and producers? And guess who his new manager is — somebody becoming notorious for pirating (manunulot) actors from their managers?”

Upon learning what the actor did to his manager, two directors dropped him from the cast of the pictures they are doing.

“Serves him right,” said the informer. “He will not go far in this business which values gratitude. He won’t live up to his surname.”

What’s up?

• Hosted by Ken Follett (photo), Journey into the Dark Ages is now airing (until Aug. 23) starting at 8 p.m. on Solar News Channel’s Stories. The series takes a look back at one of the most horrific plagues of all time known as The Black Death which claimed half of Europe’s population. Follett brings the viewers into that world and examines what the state and the church had done amidst the plague.