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| Fil-Am Comerford chefs cucumber cool |
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SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Few of us have enjoyed the thrill of mounting a one-man (or woman) show of our art. But all of us, I’m quite sure can put on an apron. On this edition, instead of thinking dinner as just another obligation, think of it as an opportunity for jump-starting your creativity. Cooking is one of the best ways for one self to remind our conscious self that we are all an artist. Like the union of canvass and pigment, cooking is alchemy, a work of wholeness-in-progress. A paring knife can be creative as a paintbrush. Scraping, slicing, shredding, stirring, simmering, sautéing are all sleights of hand that switch your conscious mind onto artistic, automatic pilot. Once the animate mind is distracted, the creative mind takes over, even if you aren’t aware of it. Whenever I don’t know what to do – whether it’s writing or living, I seek discoveries in the kitchen, such as trying to create a great dish I enjoyed somewhere else. The worst that can happen is that the experiment’s a flop and we end up eating sandwiches before bed. The best is that my pleasant brainstorming and the supper that results provide a new sensation, reminding me that nothing need to be taken for granted – especially moments of doubt, frustration, and hunger. “If your regrets linger, if you cannot find inspiration in solitude, then you still have much to learn from the writers and the poets and the cooks on becoming the artist of your own life,” Jacqueline Deval reflects in her tantalizing novel “Reckless Appetite: A Culinary Romance”…you can never re-create the past. But you can shape your own future. And you can make a cake.” Were you watching last Sunday when Iron Chef America made history? Well, folks … three days into 2010 and as The Wall Street Journal proclaimed we’re already celebrating the Culinary Event of the Decade! It’s an Iron Chef America Showdown, starring Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse and the White House Executive Chef (and our very own “kababayan”) Cristeta Comerford. Iron Chef America is a spin-off from the hit Japanese cooking show called Iron Chef that got a small but dedicated following even in Manila. The show’s concept involves pitting the country’s top chefs against each other in a time-pressure cook-off challenge using a secret ingredient. The four chefs were welcomed by the First Lady, Michelle Obama and allowed to use anything found in the White House garden to help create their meals. The competition then moved back to the network’s Kitchen Stadium in New York, where Flay and Comerford faced-off against Batali and Lagasse to produce five dishes showcasing the ingredients. The judges included celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin (who happens to be a Filipino-American, too) and actress Jane Seymour. As everyone knows, Comerford, the first-ever Filipino-American White House Executive Chef, feeds the most powerful people in the world. But here she also got the chance to prove her culinary mettle against some of the world’s most skilled chefs. The main feature during this Iron Chef episode was the use of a very rich variety of crops from the White House garden; fennels, collard greens, kale, rhubarbs, broccoli, watermelon and icicle radish, purple cauliflower and japans eggplant, among others. The Lagasse and Batali dishes comprised of a scallop with radish and fennel salad; an oyster and salad trio featuring White House greens; sweet potato and ricotta ravioli; a succulent lard-wrapped quail and turkey wrapped rice and spinach duet; and dessert of sweet corn beignet with an orange liquor-spiked chicory coffee. Comerford and Flay countered with dishes featuring a fennel and apple salad with oyster; garden salad with lobster and crispy squid; a delightful broccoli clam chowder (that Mrs. Comerford said was Filipino-inspired); a seven vegetable All-American barbecue dish that incorporated grilled pork, collard greens tamale, cauliflower cheese, and pickled watermelon radish. For the coup de grace (deathblow) Comerford and Flay served up a meringue sweet potato tart, “I told her don’t be afraid to use her Filipino background, which have a lot of flavors there,” Flay said of Comerford. Following suit, Comerford tried to infuse ginger, lemongrass and other herbs to bring the best out of the vegetables, which she has often pointed out, is the building block of many traditional Filipino dishes. Comerford said in a statement that her Filipino heritage made her better equipped to meet the challenge of feeding the Obama family a healthy diet. After a frenetic hour of creating dishes that one judge described as “not of this world” the Comerford-Flay team emerged victorious. Comerford not only won esteem but also became the first White House chef to compete in Iron Chef America. Cristeta Comerford joined the White House kitchen as assistant chef during the Clinton administration. She was promoted Executive Chef by former First Lady Laura Bush in 2005, and reappointed by Mrs. Obama in 2009 because of her dish’s emphasis on healthy cuisine. Comerford earned her Bachelor of Science in Food Technology diploma from the University of the Philippines and has 26 years of culinary experience in kitchens from Washington D.C. to Chicago, and from Austria to France. She lives in Columbia, Maryland with husband John (also a chef) and 7-year-old daughter named Danielle, who has reportedly showed signs of following in her parents’ footsteps. If one thing stood out during the Iron Chef episode, it was the way our “kababayan” conducted her during the entire proceedings. For you, dear readers, who happen to watch the show – let me ask you this: Who was sweating more, Mr. Flay or Mr. Lagasse? They both seemed mighty pink there toward the end – Mr. Lagasse squeezing ketchup into his remoulade, Mr. Flay yelling, “How much time?” Seriously, for me – the only one who kept her peas in the basket, so to speak - as it were, was Cristeta Comerford. Truly, she was cool as a cucumber, even when her pastry guy was in the weeds and commentator Alton Brown asked her strange, overwrought and unanswerable questions. And brother … her look was flawless throughout, which is more than I can say about the gentlemen. I completely love her now. But here’s the bigger question, really: Was the fix in? I mean, I know reality TV isn’t exactly real, but this felt like a set up of the highest order as one blogger on the subject of dining out noted. He’s got a point – How are you going to get your Food Network show invited to the most powerful house in the world and not give the gold to the host team? For myself, I think it would have been hard, even for British subjects like Ms. Lawson and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (Mrs. Seymour’s greatest role) to deny Mrs. Comerford and her employer’s vegetables the win. I think that would have been the case, too even if that chowder thing she and Mr. Flay made wasn’t as good as it looked and sounded. Mr. Flays’ barbecue and tamale dish was a winning dish, right there. But my feeling is he and our “kababayan” would have won with a simple pile of blue-corn tortillas, some honey mustard and a heap of steamed kale. I say the real winner of the show appeared to be the First Lady’s crusade for healthy eating and backyard gardens. Yum-m-m-m! And of course, our very own kababayan’s classy performance as the first White House chef to compete successfully in Iron Chef America, Comerford emerges from all this - fragrant and full of flavor – this Filipino-American chef absolutely knows, just as the artist does, what is the genuine article and what merely passes for real. As cool as a cucumber, indeed – our Comerford truly is! |