Cooking demos draw crowds at Dining Festival in Pampanga

MANILA, Philippines - Since the province is well-known as the “culinary capital” of the country, you wondered if anyone from Pampanga would still be interested to watch a cooking demonstration, considering that its people are popularly acknowledged as expert cooks themselves. But come they did and, over the weekend, there was quite a crowd that gathered at the activity center of Ayala’s Marquee Mall in Angeles City. The three-day event featured celebrity chefs and food columnists Heny Sison, Claude Tayag, Sau del Rosario and Shirly May Galvez, as part of the EAT Dining Festival’s continuing mall tour sponsored by The Philippine STAR, Ayala Malls and BPI.

Chef Heny presented three recipes — an appetizer, a pasta dish and a dessert. But more than just the recipes and cooking demonstration, Chef Heny’s presentation was chockful of practical cooking tips that she generously shared with the attentive audience, which included students from the Northpoint Academy of Culinary Arts in Pampanga, curious shoppers, housewives, and families with small children.

Heny Sison is widely recognized as the country’s premier cake designer and pastry chef. The Heny Sison School of Cake Decorating and Baking, which she opened in 1985, was renamed the Heny Sison Culinary School after the curriculum was expanded to include cooking classes conducted by a pool of chef-instructors specializing in Philippine, Asian, and European cuisine, among others.

For the choux puffs with mushroom filling appetizer, which brings to mind the more familiar cream puff but this time, with a savory filling, Chef Heny gave the following advice: preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit; if lower, it will not puff but will only bake; add the egg to the boiled mixture when there is no more steam or else the eggs will cook; if you add more than the four eggs called for in the recipe, it will be too soft; use margarine, which is more flavorful than butter; transfer the choux paste up to only half of the piping bag and don’t fill it to the brim so you can squeeze it properly; piping should be done at a 90 degree angle into 1-inch balls, 1 inch apart onto the prepared cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.

“Know your oven,” says Chef Heny, who believes that “all bakers can cook, but not all cooks can bake.” She prefers to be called a “culinarian” rather than a “chef,” having earned her Pro Chef Certification (Level I: Certified Culinarian) from the Culinary Institute of America.

Chef Heny Sison’s presentation was chockfull of practical cooking tips. Here she shows how the choux paste should be piped one inch apart onto the cookie sheet for the choux puffs with mushroom filling.

She is constantly updating herself, traveling the world and taking up special courses, expanding her repertoire and refining her skills and expertise. “You have to love what you do,” she says. Her vision for the country is to standardize and elevate the food industry to match international standards.

Chef Heny’s penne pasta had two kinds of pesto, a green and white, basil and walnut pesto. In place of walnut, you can also use kasuy. Add a handful of rock salt to the water after it has boiled then drop in the pasta and cook al dente. Never add oil to the water. “Season always according to your taste,” is Chef Heny’s advice. “Don’t take out food you did not taste.”

The strawberries in marsala with honey and mascarpone cream tasted as good as it looked. The audience enjoyed the free taste-testing as well as the free-wheeling question and answer that punctuated the cooking demonstrations, which was ably emceed by local DJ Jet Raymundo.

Chef Claude Tayag, the ninth of 12 children in the family, learned everything he knows about cooking growing up in his mother’s always- busy kitchen. Trust this multi-faceted homegrown talent from Pampanga to present a deconstructed version of fresh lumpia, with fried wonton wrappers perched on top of a mound of fresh vegetables drizzled with brown sauce, and served with hot and spicy peanuts on the side. The co-author of the culinary tome, Kulinarya, a guidebook to Philippine cuisine, said he wanted to show the versatility of this healthy vegetable dish by preparing it four ways— the deconstructed fresh lumpia named STAR Lumpia Tower; lumpiang hubad, ensconced in a heart of Romaine lettuce leaf;

Food booths were set up at the activity center where the cooking demonstrations were held. Photos by Val Rodriguez and Joven Cagande

lumpiang sariwa; and fried spring rolls or lumpiang Shanghai.

“There’s no lumpiang Shanghai in Shanghai,” says chef Claude. “The lumpia may have come from the Chinese, but we’ve adopted and adapted it to become our own.” It can be strictly vegetarian, not using even fish sauce or patis but just asin or salt for seasoning. “Or it can be lavish and luxurious by adding shrimps or pork,” chef Claude remarked.

He also noted the Kapampangan’s unique way of using achuete oil for sautéing, giving the dish a distinctive color and flavor. One rule for cooking vegetables, he said: start with the hardest since it will take longer to cook, then add last those that can be eaten raw, like togue (bean sprouts), which had been soaked in ice water, to add a crunchy texture to the dish.

Chef Claude takes pride in his original recipe for “Claude’s Dream Dessert,” basically a buko-pandan salad, which is served in some restaurants in Manila. Using buko juice in place of plain water in the preparation of the gulaman elevates the popular dessert to a higher level, chef Claude says. Nathaniel’s, a Pampanga-based eatery with branches in Metro Manila, has its own “Ang Ma-Star-ap na buko pandan salad” as its participating STAR dish in the ongoing EAT Dining Festival.

Chef Sau del Rosario, who studied the art and science of baking bread in France, as well as Shirly May Galvez of Sumo Sam, one of the participating restaurants in STAR’s EAT Dining Festival, capped the three-day series of cooking demonstrations at the Marquee Mall. Chef Sau is said to be one of the most in-demand chefs in Manila. To add to the attractions of the program, TGIFriday’s, another EAT participating restaurant, presented Flair tending and Flash dancing, to the delight of the weekend crowd. On Saturday night, the special guest star was popular singer Jamie Rivera, who sang a cut from her latest album, “Inspirations.”

The EAT Cooking Demo Events continues its tour of the Ayala Malls nationwide until Sept. 30. Scheduled for Aug. 12-14 in Market! Market! in Taguig City are chefs Tristan Encarnacion, Shirly May Galvez, Jing Roxas, and Nancy Lumen. Don’t miss it. EAT’s a date!