Aubrey Miles on the art of cooking

Even if Aubrey’s immediate and more modest aspiration is to ‘make my own food, even make my own healthy recipe for myself every after I work out — more like a pre- and post-meal,’ she has set her eyes on higher culinary goals. But that’s just the way she’s wired.

Unless you religiously follow Aubrey Miles, there are a few things you might have missed from the time she exploded onscreen in the early 2000s as the sexiest star to right now.

And right now, she is a hyphenate — in a good way.

In addition to remaining an actress — she appeared in GMA’s 2018 daytime romcom, Ang Pag-ibig Ko’y Ikaw, alongside Camille Prats — she has also become a personal fitness trainer, a racecar driver, a social media darling with 723,000 followers on Instagram and partner of actor-entrepreneur Troy Montero for the last 15 years and mother of three. 

Scroll through Aubrey’s Instagram feed and you’ll find she has also become quite the domestic. She shares snaps of her house plants, the surfeit of books she lugs home from family trips abroad, her cutie daughter Rocket Miller, who made her appearance last December, plus, her cooking.

One of her life goals, she said last year, was to “learn serious cooking before I turn 40.”  Well, she did enroll at Chef de Partie and Sous Chef at GalaStars Culinary, the school I own and manage.

And, that, by any standards, is pretty serious cooking. For the Level 1 Chef de Partie course, Aubrey completed 20 lessons in three months. Aside from acquiring knife skills, she also learned about kitchen systems, the functionality of ingredients, cooking methods, as well as the principles of baking.

She found the latter a bit of a challenge. “Hey, I didn’t realize baking is harder than cooking food,” she captioned an Instagram post showing her with a trayful of chicken and pork baked bruffins. “This is not even major baking pa LOL.”

She also learned that baking is all about precision and not oido-oido. Aubey confessed on the same post: “Thanks @galastarsculinary for not just letting me go. For a beginner like me, I’m good with ingredients to taste. With baking, you need to use the exact measurement if not, it won’t work. Ouch.” 

She was also required to prepare everything from soup stocks to Greek-style lamb shanks, roast Peking-style chicken to grilling a fish she herself filleted. The student who passes this course can actually head a station or a section in the production line of a kitchen. In the hierarchy of kitchen bosses, the Chef de Partie is third in command after the Chef de Cuisine or Executive Chef and the Sous Chef.

Which brings me to the second course she took: Being deputy to the Executive Chef. To complete her training as Sous Chef, Aubrey had to go through 10 lessons in which she learned the rigors of cooking French, French-Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Scandinavian, Italian, Vietnamese and other world cuisines.

She did splash her handiwork on IG. Showing off the buffalo chicken and crab cakes she prepared, she said: “Every time I see someone posting food that they made. I just go, ‘OK cute.’ Now that I started culinary school, I totally GET IT. You’re so proud of your creation! You just gotta share it.”

Flashing a large smile and holding aloft two types of soups — French onion and Spanish seafood — Aubrey declared: “Do I look happy? YES. One day I realized that I will have enough and I will have no other option than to get better.

“I have more to learn in this world, haha. Sorry, guys. I reached this age and ngayon lang ako nakaluto ng seryoso kaya proud naman ako. Home cooking is fun, for me, but culinary skills from @galastarsculinary give me hope to plan something bigger once I become a Chef.”

If the captions of her food posts sound like the motivational texts she intersperses with the workout routines and blissful domestic vignettes she uploads, they are.

Quotes like, “Exercise is a blessing, not a chore. I work out because I am grateful that I physically can” and the stark reminder to “GO TO THE GYM” is no different from her declaration about becoming a chef one day: “I CAN BE ANYTHING I WANT TO BE.”

Even if her immediate and more modest aspiration is to “make my own food, even make my own healthy recipe for myself every after I work out — more like a pre- and post-meal,” Aubrey has set her eyes on higher culinary goals.

But that’s just the way she’s wired. She has a goal. She goes for it. Let another quote she posted speak for who and what she is: “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

Loud and clear, future Chef Aubrey, a true hyphenate.

Does she cook at home?  

“I used to cook but our housekeeper just always wants to cook for us and just got used to it. It’s somehow good and bad. Good that I’m saving time, I have more time for work. Bad, because we’re getting used to it and just depending on her every day.”

What are your daily meals like? 

“For breakfast, we always have eggs (any kind), pandesal or pancakes, beef/turkey bacon, oatmeal and coffee.

“For lunch, we always have Filipino food. Our heaviest meal is lunch. And we only eat brown rice at home.

“We hardly cook for dinner, except on weekends. During weekdays, we like fruits, salad, soup or sometimes we make fruit shakes for dinner.”

Did you alter your diet when you were pregnant? 

“I still ate the same, just added more brown rice, fruits and gave in a little bit to my cravings. I don’t drink anything artificial. I just love cold water with every meal. I also drank more milk and took prenatal supplements.”

What are the family’s eating habits? 

With husband Troy Montero

“We all eat together as much as possible, especially, on weekends.” 

Do you eat out often? 

“Yes, we do eat out, maybe on weekends. We love American or Italian restaurants because of the pizza and pasta, hahaha! Don’t forget their bread. And a good salad for me. 

“But we really just like to stay home and watch movies on our nice couch. If we go out, most probably because we’re going to watch a movie, so we’ll have a nice dinner before that. More often than not, though, we love just being at home together in our pajamas.”

Aubrey Miles’s Quickfire Slumbook

•Comfort food: Sinigang na miso or kare-kare.

•Dessert: Chocolate cake.

•One food you can eat forever: Anything sinigang.

•Food you don’t like: I don’t eat pork anymore.

•What you can’t resist: Dessert. 

•Most favorite ingredient: Vegetables. 

•All-time favorite restaurant: Japanese restaurants.

•Best meal you’ve had: Authentic Japanese sushi.

•What would be your last meal?: Sinigang.