Kitchen Boy

Of my two boys, it is Gabriel who shares my interest in toiling in the kitchen. He's always volunteering to help, is always around watching what I do, and has since cooked Tinolang Manok (Gingered Chicken Soup) with only a little guidance and instruction from me.

The pic above was taken in my mother in law's kitchen in North Cotabato back in 2006. The stove is typical of houses in the provinces and is fed with firewood. (It is however quickly losing out to the more convenient, air-friendly gas stoves.) This stove had a pugon (wood-fired oven) which my husband said has seen better days.

On that vacation I tried baking a cake in a pugon at my sister-in-law's house and it was quite an adventure -- having no thermostat to rely on, having no see-through oven door, and having have to go back out every so often to feed wood to the fire was arduous. (And to think back then this was the only way to go..)

The difficulty was compounded by the fact that I didn't have tools (no measuring cups, no mixer) and was quadrupling the recipe to have cake good for 50 people.

I wasn't too happy with the results -- the banana cake was harder and less flavorful than I wanted it to be, but oddly enough, twas wiped out to the last morsel. Maybe the folks were plain hungry. :)