Recipes for Health: Oatmeal Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes

Recipes for Health: Oatmeal Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes

Click the link above to read how to make

Mashed potatoes, 10 ways

Article from the Manila Standard.  This is how classic mashed potatoes are prepared: Cover 2 pounds whole russet or Yukon gold potatoes with cold salted water; simmer 45 minutes. Drain, peel and mash with 1 stick butter. Add 1 cup hot milk, and salt and pepper; mash until smooth and fluffy.

Change it up a little, add a little of this and a little of that, and you’ve got a more interesting mash. Here are some alternatives you can easily try at home:  Continue reading here http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideLifestyle.htm?f=2009/november/18/lifestyle3.isx&d=/2009/november/18

Cebu Chef school be a world class chef, we need more cooking courses to train world class chefs




http://www.mostinstitute.org/ is advertising their school in cebu above.    The major colleges in the Philippines need to take note that the ads in the newspaper are always asking for cooks and chefs.  It seems for now that only these type of institutes are avaialable.  TESDA should look into encouraging low cost schools to teach international cooking as well.  It is in demand and the schools are not meeting the needs.  International ships, international hotels are seeking well trained qualified people.  It needs to be developed. 

Read more about ships needing chefs here at my Seaman blog http://filipinoseamen.blogspot.com/ 
and my hotel and restaurant blog http://philippineshrm.blogspot.com/

Tags:  cooking school students philippines , cooking schools philippines, chefs training philippines

So You Want to Be a Culinary Entrepreneur?

At 54, he is easily one of the oldest undergraduates at Monroe College. He is also one of the nattiest. He usually dresses in a suit, perhaps his navy pinstripe, and a Panama hat.
Since September of last year, Mr. Ste. Marthe has been working toward a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management on top of his associate’s degree from the Culinary Institute of America. He cooks by day for the family of a financier with homes in Manhattan and Southampton (yes, he spends the summer) and goes to class on weeknights and Saturday mornings at Monroe’s Bronx and New Rochelle campuses, and online. He expects to graduate in April. He knows he can cook. But manage a restaurant? Create a spreadsheet? Do accounting?
In spring 2008, Mr. Ste. Marthe worked for a small New York hedge fund, managing the kitchen and dining room and planning menus. The food costs alone for 100 employees’ breakfast and lunch, five days a week, was $60,000 a month. “I had to find an accountant to teach me how to prepare a spreadsheet, so I can identify the areas where we could reduce our costs,” says Mr. Ste. Marthe, who discovered a lot of waste in “ordering too many eggs and fruit, so it spoiled.” He cut costs to $45,000. But Wall Street crashed and the job ended.
He began looking for jobs. He wanted to go into hotel or restaurant management, to move away from being a private chef and traveling with families (Mr. Cosby had five homes, and a private aircraft the chef stewarded). He wanted to stay put. “Every time I applied for a job,” Mr. Ste. Marthe says, “the responses were, ‘You have a great background, great experience, but you don’t have management experience.’ ”
Ambitious chefs no longer just cook. “As you move up, you do less cooking,” explains Frederic Mayo, a clinical professor of hospitality and tourism management at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. “You need more skills than cooking skills — more accounting, more marketing, more management.” And it’s no longer enough to arm yourself with an associate’s degree in classical cooking techniques. Culinary entrepreneurs are going back for bachelor’s degrees in hospitality management to learn food and beverage management, the financial aspects of the business, and marketing and sales. If you are a student without a culinary background, the four-year programs may offer a few courses in cooking, but don’t expect to become top chef.

To usher cooks into the business world, and business people into the culinary world, the Culinary Institute of America and Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration have created a joint program in which juniors at Cornell, where there is no cooking, can spend a year at the C.I.A., as the institute is called. In turn, C.I.A. students who are accepted into Cornell’s hospitality management bachelor’s program get credit for their associate’s degree.
“You can go into hospitality management without culinary training,” says Peter Rainsford, the vice president for academic affairs at the C.I.A. “But the Cornellians who go into hospitality are relying on someone else for the culinary expertise. The pure culinarian who understands the food and flavor profiles and food preparation can partner with someone with the business skills.” The dual program offers “the best of both worlds,” he says.

Mr. Ste. Marthe, formerly a pure culinarian, is aiming to master the second skill set. Monroe, which offers an associate’s degree from its new culinary arts center, gave Mr. Ste. Marthe credit for most of his C.I.A. courses, including food and beverage management, baking and pastry arts. It also waived its required internship.

To find a program, Mr. Ste. Marthe had collected catalogs from the nearest schools offering a degree in hospitality management, including New York City College of Technology, in Brooklyn, and New York University. (The C.I.A., in Hyde Park, N.Y., and Cornell, in Ithaca, were too far away.) “I could benefit more from going to a more prestigious school,” he acknowledges, “but my finances are limited, and with my work schedule Monroe seemed to be my best choice.” With $1,100 in grants from the college for his 3.6 grade-point average, the cost of the degree will come to $18,000. While private chefs make $60,000 and up (and Mr. Ste. Marthe is at the high end), he has had to take out federal loans in the amount of $15,520, about half of that need-based.
Another factor in his choice was the New Rochelle campus, which is close to Mount Vernon, N.Y., where Mr. Ste. Marthe lives with his wife and two children.
FOR Mr. Ste. Marthe, spontaneous continuing education, whether for a degree or a weeklong internship, has been a leitmotif to his life.

“We were very poor,” he remembers. He was raised with three brothers in St. Lucia by a single mother, a cook at a European-style bistro called the Calabash. At home, food was meager. His mother made stews of dried cod, soaked with tomatoes and onions. Off to work, “she’d leave maybe curry chicken, or sometimes it would be just bread and some tea for us to heat up,” he says. At the restaurant, he would see how the nonpoor ate. “The hamburger, beautiful sliced tomatoes. Everything was fresh and lively. There was very low music, people were happy. It had an impression on me.”

At 18, he got his first food-related job on a yacht, as an assistant to a local chef, who taught him mise en place. Eighteen months later he went to work as a steward on a 105-foot yacht used by Robert H. Abplanalp, who had made a fortune designing a revolutionary aerosol spray valve but is best known as a loyal friend to Richard M. Nixon (whom Mr. Ste. Marthe did meet). The man who owned a private island in the Bahamas befriended the young Caribbean islander.

When Mr. Abplanalp asked Mr. Ste. Marthe what he wanted to do in his life, the answer was to go to the Culinary Institute of America and become a chef. Mr. Abplanalp paid tuition, room and board for Mr. Ste. Marthe, who worked as a janitor and dishwasher to earn spending money.
“I fitted right in,” he says. “I had discovered my passion, and the most startling thing was my first winter. I didn’t have the clothes. One of my first classes was ice carving outside, and I didn’t last too long.” He found an Army Navy store and bought sweaters and long johns. “I kept the heat so high in my room that my roommate, as soon as I fell asleep, he opened the window.”

He did his student externship at Regine’s with Larry Forgione, who then hired Mr. Ste. Marthe as a line chef at the River Café in Brooklyn. “You could tell he had a great sense of emotion about his cooking,” Mr. Forgione says.
But Mr. Ste. Marthe, who also worked at Espace near Union Square, missed the closeness of working with families, and when he heard one was looking for a chef, he sent the butler a résumé. He was called a week later to try out, by making a bouillabaise and salad for a family of four. It was the Cosbys. After three tryouts, Mr. Ste. Marthe was offered the job, which he held from 1990 until he set out on his own in 2003.
Private chefs typically prepare two meals a day, and a day can last from noon to 10 p.m. The key to success, Mr. Ste. Marthe says, is to please the families, “to provide foods of their choice, and to be as flexible as possible in meeting their needs.” Mr. Cosby’s favorite dish was a traditional bouillabaisse, and he sent Mr. Ste. Marthe to Le Bacon, the restaurant on the Côte d’Azur, to learn from the source.
Mr. Cosby and his wife, Camille, helped Mr. Ste. Marthe continue his education with a number of such one- to two-week internships; one was at Le Cirque, where the owner, Sirio Maccioni, is a friend of the Cosbys’. “What you don’t see, you don’t know, and you’re not able to build on what you don’t know,” Mr. Cosby says. “So the friends Mrs. Cosby and I had made over the years opened their doors to Conrad. Not everyone working for someone is willing to go to a higher level. A person’s self-esteem may not allow the person to challenge him or herself, so they will say, ‘I’m just fine where I am.’ Conrad jumped right in.”
Le Cirque has a tradition of taking interns. “The mentality of a good restaurateur is to let young people come in,” Mr. Maccioni says.

Mr. Ste. Marthe, too, wants to work with the young, and might even teach at a culinary school. “It’s important to have a B.A,” he says. “I don’t want to stop at management. I want to work with young people, and let them see someone like myself from a humble island kind of background can be passionate about cooking and pursue it.”

As Mr. Cosby says, “Conrad believes in himself.”

Elaine Louie writes the “Temporary Vegetarian” column for The Times’s Dining section and is author of “Savoir Fare London: Stylish Dining for Under $25.”   Read the complete article here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/education/edlife/01conted-t.html?_r=1&ref=edlife&pagewanted=print

Manila Philippines First Gourmet Academy opens evening classes for diploma and short courses


My comment:  Now if more could be opened at the universities in Cebu and Manila so the course cost could be reduced.


There is a place and a time for all aspiring chefs and food enthusiasts to pursue their passion for cooking, whether it be for the purpose of putting up their own restaurants, building a career in culinary arts or striving to be masters of their own kitchens.

First Gourmet Academy offers both diploma and short courses, not only for students who can make it to their regular morning and afternoon classes, but also for those whose schedule will allow them only to attend evening classes.

The evening batch for the Diploma Course in Commercial Cooking and Culinary Arts-DCCA and for the Diploma in Commercial Cooking, Culinary Arts and Entrepreneurship-DCCAE, to be held three times a week (every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.), will start on Nov. 9. The curriculum will be the same as the morning and afternoon classes. DCCA teaches the essentials of food safety and sanitation, basic culinary skills and food science, baking and pastry, garde manger and international cuisines while DCCAE is designed for the budding chef cum entrepreneur. covering basic restaurant design, wine appreciation, bartending, service styles and kitchen management.
Meanwhile, evening classes for the short courses include fundamentals of culinary arts, held every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. starting Oct. 21 and fundamentals of baking and pastry held every Saturday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Another batch for the short course on fundamentals of baking and pastry will begin on Nov. 7 and will be held every Saturday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. for four sessions as well. Enrolling in these sessions can open windows of opportunity for home-based businesses specially during the forthcoming Christmas season.

First Gourmet Academy’s other ongoing diploma courses for commercial, culinary arts and entrepreneurship are held every 8 a.m. to 12:30 (morning batch) and from 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. (afternoon batch).
Since 2008 when First Gourmet Academy opened its doors, it has always been committed to executing a strong curriculum aimed at developing the students’ competency and professionalism. The school not only trains students to become chefs at par with the best in the world, it also prepares them to become successful entrepreneurs. This is made possible through a distinct culinary program designed to impart the business side of a culinary endeavor including the management, operation and finance aspects


First Gourmet also offers longer kitchen hours and more hands-on training, making sure that students spend a significant portion of their time cooking in the kitchen. Instructors’ focus on the progress of the students is further assured by limiting the number of students per class.

First Gourmet Academy is run and managed by respected and experienced professionals in the Philippine food industry. The business side is headed by seasoned entrepreneurs Romy Mercado, First Gourmet Academy president and Dennis Nakpil, First Gourmet Academy treasurer, while developing the culinary programs is the expertise of veteran Swedish chef Mats Loo, First Gourmet Academy director.
First Gourmet Academy is located at Capitol Greenstreet, Capitol Hills Drive, Old Balara, Quezon City. For inquiries, call 951-1687 and 951-9655; Mobile phone 0908-259-2639 or e-mail info@firstgourmetacademy.com. Check out its Web site: www.firstgourmetacademy.com

Links to cooking shows, cooking menus, online shows

Here are some of the of the food links, just click the links


Grill a Perfect Grilled-Cheese Sandwich

If your grilled-cheese sandwiches never achieve that perfect diner-style golden grill but instead end up a shade too far into burnt-marshmallow territory, a simple tweak or two can make your sandwich perfect. More »

Celebrity chefs, TV shows and Internet change how we cook

Dawn Jackson Blatner of Chicago has been reading Gourmet magazine for several years and was sad to hear that the November issue will be the last one.

But the truth is, when she wants to find a new recipe these days, she often goes online. Just the other day she searched the Internet for a simple tomato soup recipe. "Out popped a million entries," she says.

Bonnie Taub-Dix, a New York City mother of three who loves to cook, says she reads "cooking magazines and cookbooks like other people read novels." She devours her favorites from cover to cover. But she, too, surfs the Net for recipes and information.

Last week, Condé Nast announced that it would stop publishing Gourmet, which was launched in 1941 and has been the darling of food devotees for decades. 


Throughout its history, the magazine focused on America's unfolding culinary scene, pitching articles toward an upscale audience.

Today's economy and dwindling advertising revenue were at work against Gourmet, but the bigger picture is that the food world has changed. People such as Blatner and Taub-Dix who love to cook now have a dizzying array of choices when they're looking for information and recipes. They can search online, watch cooking shows, flip through personality-driven magazines, read
food blogs.

It's a world of celebrity chefs, social networking and recipe
cyber-swapping, specialized niche websites and blogs, ingredients of all sorts easily ordered online.

Television has been one of the most powerful forces in this new world, rocketing to stardom such cooking gurus as Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, Paula Deen, Christopher Kimball, Bobby Flay and Buddy Valastro, the Cake Boss.


"The Food Network is like MTV was in the '80s," says Lee, host of Sandra's Money Saving Meals and Semi-Homemade Cooking With Sandra Lee.


Just good eating

The TV chefs and their shows have distinct personalities that appeal to their particular fans.

For instance, Ray, bubbly host of the Food Network's 30 Minute Meals With Rachael Ray and editorial director of her own magazine, Every Day With Rachael Ray, says she believes fans of her cooking show are attracted to it because of its accessibility and her "can do" attitude.

"We want people to be successful with recipes and not intimidated by their kitchens," she says. "When you are done with a recipe from our shows or magazine, it should look like the picture. Our recipes are that easy, and you don't need any specific skills to make them."

And Deen, down-home star of the Food Network's Paula's Best Dishes and Paula's Home Cooking and editor of her own magazine, says viewers are attracted to her shows because she's "not fancy and more like their neighbor and family. I cook real-people food. I like to talk about issues that affect the everyday person who is trying to keep it together for their family."

Kimball takes an almost scientific approach. The bow-tied host of PBS' America's Test Kitchen and founder and editor of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines says the challenge for food magazines and TV shows in this new world "is to create a brand that is unique."

His focus is on testing recipes to make the best possible dish. Some recipes are tried 50 times or more. The magazines also give test-kitchen tips, explanations of why the chefs prepared the dish the way they did and make-ahead advice.

Kimball says the goal is to make great food and explain where things can go wrong. "We explain why bad things can happen to good recipes. Our readers want to understand why we are doing things."

Michael Clinton of Hearst Magazines, which publishes the Food Network Magazine, says he was amazed by the star power of the celebrity chefs at a recent food and wine festival.

"When Bobby Flay walked in, you would have thought Sting arrived. When Paula Deen walked in, you would have thought Elizabeth Taylor arrived."

When Lee meets fans, they often ask to have their photo taken with her, and they pepper her with questions, she says. "When people walk up to me, I'm expecting them to ask me for some information. In grocery stores they do. 


They want to know - if I don't have X, can I use Y? If I don't have Y, can I use Z? They'll say, 'My son doesn't like this kind of cheese. What could I use instead of it in that recipe?"

One reason there has been such an explosion of food information is that today "everybody is a foodie," says Lee, who also is editor of her own magazine and author of three new cookbooks.

And it's all more personal now. There's a wide range of publications, TV shows and websites because there's a wide range of opinions and tastes, she says.

Make it fast, make it healthySo what do foodies today want? "They want it quick, and they want it healthy," Lee says. "We have a triple A factor: It has to be aspirational, accessible and affordable."

Lisa Gosselin, editorial director of EatingWell magazine, says nutrition has become increasingly important to many consumers, and the amount of time they have to prepare meals has shortened considerably.

"For many people," she says, "cooking has become 'What is going to be good for me, what is going to be good for my family and how can I prepare something that is going to be fresh, quick and healthy?' "

Most of EatingWell's recipes take less than 45 minutes to make and use about 12 ingredients, she says.

"What Gourmet covered and the recipes they presented might have represented what was the forefront of a trend but may not be what you cook for dinner on a Tuesday night."

People want practical food preparation, so EatingWell's recipe testers grocery-shop for their own ingredients so they know which things might be hard to find, Gosselin says.Then there's money. Ray says budget is a major factor for her readers and viewers.

"Right now we are strongly focusing on value and stretching a buck," she says. "We want people to get quality meals for their money. I think value will continue to be very important."

Deen says the economy "is definitely having an impact on how people cook for their families. People want good healthy meals at a good value. Everyone is watching the bottom line."

From farm to tableReaders today are much more aware of where their food is coming from, too, and they want their food to be from local sources as much as possible, says Barbara Fairchild, editor of Bon Appétit. "Our readers have always shopped farmers markets and what I like to call the 'fringes' of the supermarket for fresh produce, fresh fish, dairy."

People everywhere are realizing the importance of seasonality, she says. "So they want recipes and information that show working with fresh ingredients doesn't have to be any more difficult or time-consuming than using ready-made food."

Ray agrees. "Farm to table is very popular right now, and I think that trend will continue . helping put the focus back on where food is coming from."


In general, Fairchild says, what's exciting about the food world now is it's changing all the time. She says people are interested in the full range of the food experience.

That certainly applies to Chicago's Blatner, who finds the new world an exciting place where a wealth of information is available to her whenever she wants it.

"For someone like me who loves to eat food, prepare food, read about food and talk about food," she says, "it's great to have so many resources right at my fingertips."

where their food is coming from, too, and they want their food to be from local sources as much as possible, says Barbara Fairchild, editor of Bon Appétit. "Our readers have always shopped farmers markets and what I like to call the 'fringes' of the supermarket for fresh produce, fresh fish, dairy."


People everywhere are realizing the importance of seasonality, she says. "So they want recipes and information that show working with fresh ingredients doesn't have to be any more difficult or time-consuming than using ready-made food."

Ray agrees. "Farm to table is very popular right now, and I think that trend will continue . helping put the focus back on where food is coming from."  In general, Fairchild says, what's exciting about the food world now is it's changing all the time. She says people are interested in the full range of the food experience.

That certainly applies to Chicago's Blatner, who finds the new world an exciting place where a wealth of information is available to her whenever she wants it.

"For someone like me who loves to eat food, prepare food, read about food and talk about food," she says, "it's great to have so many resources right at my fingertips."   Read the article at the original posting
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2009-10-11-recipe-for-change_N.htm


links

cooking school cebu

Where can you find the cheapest cooking school in cebu?W ith certification of course?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218004936AAMSxH4
http://chef2chef.net/culinary-institute/detail/international-philippines-cebu-city-culinary-academy.htm

http://www.icaac.for-you.info/index.html

My wife is going to the beginning classes on Saturdays they are charging her 30,000 p a sem and that includes they supply all the food to cook and every week she brings it home to me... Pretty good reminds me of a nice resturant in the US ... they also have other classes on deserts , wine etc its close to Southwestern university.. check it out my wife is becoming a pretty good cook
http://www.icaac.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=37

CULINARY SCHOOLS
PHILIPPINE SCHOOL OF CULINARY ARTS
G/F Gabriliz Hotel, #1 Good Shepherd Road, Banawa
Cebu, Cebu
Tel. No. +63.32.419-6020 | +63.32.262-7967 (TF)

MOST INSTITUTE - CEBU CAMPUS
Khuz'uz Bldg., M.C. Briones, North Highway
Mandaue, Cebu
Tel. No. +63.32.516-7523 | +63.32.420-5858 (TF)

links

cooking school cebu
Where can you find the cheapest cooking school in cebu?W ith certification of course?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218004936AAMSxH4
http://chef2chef.net/culinary-institute/detail/international-philippines-cebu-city-culinary-academy.htm
http://www.icaac.for-you.info/index.html

My wife is going to the beginning classes on Saturdays they are charging her 30,000 p a sem and that includes they supply all the food to cook and every week she brings it home to me... Pretty good reminds me of a nice resturant in the US ... they also have other classes on deserts , wine etc its close to Southwestern university.. check it out my wife is becoming a pretty good cook
http://www.icaac.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=37

CULINARY SCHOOLS
PHILIPPINE SCHOOL OF CULINARY ARTS
G/F Gabriliz Hotel, #1 Good Shepherd Road, Banawa
Cebu, Cebu
Tel. No. +63.32.419-6020 | +63.32.262-7967 (TF)

MOST INSTITUTE - CEBU CAMPUS
Khuz'uz Bldg., M.C. Briones, North Highway
Mandaue, Cebu
Tel. No. +63.32.516-7523 | +63.32.420-5858 (TF)