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MAGSAYSAY Lines is one of the premier shipping lines in
the country. A number of maritime and cruise line
crewmen, specially those in the service sector whom we
met and are successful in their jobs, attribute their
basic training to this company. A good friend, Iain Hay,
currently the public health officer of the Royal
Caribbean Cruise Lines (of the company which launched
the world’s largest ocean liner: Freedom of the Seas),
used to give training with Magsaysay.
Perhaps
it was an afterthought that the Magsaysay Institute of
Hospitality and Culinary Arts (Mihca) was established.
With a huge demand for overseas workers to man ships and
the global standards for world-class service, Filipino
crew members are sought for their excellent service
aptitudes. Not surprisingly, when we ask our OFWs about
their training, most of the good ones owe it to
Magsaysay Lines. So Mihca was really the next logical
way to expand. And it was a good decision to partner
with well-respected Johnson and Wales University, the
US-based hospitality and culinary arts institute. (One
of my classmates took a chefs course there and she is
now a chef at William Sonoma in
Florida.)
The
newly constructed facilities at the Mihca simulate the
top-caliber ocean liner cabins, hotel and restaurant
work areas for the students to get a hands-on training.
For our recent look-see, Master Chef and University Dean
Karl Guggenmos and Dean of Culinary Education of J&W
Denver Campus Chef Jorge de la Torre flew in to impart
the J&W style of education and to cement the foundation
of their partnership with Mihca. It is not a coincidence
that both institutes believe that “learning is doing”
and this is their edge and what they intend for each
student to achieve for work whether here or abroad
As an
observer of culinary trends, I am aware that there are
lifestyle chefs and career chefs. Those who stay in the
kitchen, who are able to stand the heat, are the latter.
They acquire the discipline to meet the challenges of
serving as a chef/hospitality for the “high seas”—the
wide, open ocean of local/overseas jobs. As Mihca
graduates, the students become part of the Magsaysay
talent pool. They are actively identified for career and
placement ops (at no placement fees or spurious costs
which other recruiters “milk” from their pockets). Doris
Magsaysay Ho, the top head of the Magsaysay Lines
enterprise, mentioned that if anyone ever hears of
someone recruiting in behalf of her company and charging
illegal fees, that someone will find a reservation in
the city jail. (Atta girl, Doris!)
Mastery
and chef discipline
ON the
savory side of things, both chefs from J&W rendered a
cooking demonstration of what was to be our lunch. I
liked Chef Karl’s take on the need to reconnect with
family as he referred to Bavaria (his country origin)
and his mom’s cooking of Beef Roullade, an interesting
milk sausage (of leftover bread, milk and cheeses, then
rolled/wrapped in plastic and foil, then steamed) and
the traditional pasta batter “poured through a
colander,” the Spaetzle.
Some of
Karl’s trivia: 1) Bavarian dishes use bacon fat and the
calories can be afforded because the people work hard
all day; 2) their cattle are raised for dairy and
cheeses; 3) purple cabbage is “sweeter” than green
cabbage; 4) the proper measure of a julienne is exactly
the width of a kitchen knife’s bolster (that’s the
opposite end of the sharp tip); 5) spaetzle batter is
scraped from a flat spoon straight into boiling salted
water. From Chef Jorge, we got hold of the correct beer
batter technique by beating egg whites stiffly and
gently folding in the batter composed of all-purpose
flour, eggs, beaten egg whites and heavy beer.
Here’s
an easy Spaetzle Recipe as we observed it from Chef
Karl’s on-the-spot demo:
In a
large bowl: For every pound (or about 2 cups) of
all-purpose flour, use five eggs. Then season with salt
and pepper. Pour milk by the ¼ cupful till the batter is
of flowing consistency (like a pancake batter). Smash
the batter with a flat spoon against the sides of bowl
for about 2-3 minutes. Then let it sit till the bubbles
come out.
Boil
water with salt in a stock pot and cook the pasta
batter. My own technique for cooking Spaetzle is with a
colander. Pour the batter in the bowl of the colander
and it comes out through the holes creating pasta
ribbons that will fall into the boiling water. Cook for
about 5 minutes, then drain and serve as the starch.
You can
toss it with grated cheeses and herbs.
Keep
sailing! |
