A Sneak Peek At Our New Kitchen

Smiley people: Oliver and Narra happily hanging out near the storage area.

I wanted to wait until the official opening or "house" blessing before blogging about the family's new kitchen, but I felt the strong urge to write about what's really getting us all excited these days. So here's a sneak peak at the new commissary built by Oliver's family.  It's still a work in progress, with a lot more purchases to be done, and construction to be completed. But the kitchen's been operational for a week now, and the staff are doing rounds of cooking to gain familiarity with the equipment and recipes.

  

One side of the cooking area.

I never thought I'd get excited about being in a kitchen - I'm neither a foodie nor a cook, but I find myself spending many hours in our commissary, never bored, and completely absorbed, figuring out how things work. I'm sure years of watching cooking shows on t.v. has something to do with my excitement.  From Wok with Yan in the 80s to all the various cooking shows on the Lifestyle Network in the 2000s, to today's Top Chef, Iron Chef, and Chef Rosebud's Quickfire (she's a good old friend from my high school days), I clocked in countless hours of contented spectatorship. Now, I get to observe all the action at close range, and for prolonged periods.  My being a researcher has something to do with it too, for I enjoy observing - and data gathering - these are the kinds of activities I engaged in while doing field work. I need to be familiar with what's going on, so I can be of use - ok, haha, definitely NOT with cooking, but with many other things. 

The cooking area from another angle.

I love bringing my children to the kitchen, so they can gain precious exposure in their formative years. I suspect this will be second nature to them, the art and science of food preparation - it runs in their blood. Oliver's mother is an accomplished cook, just like her mother before her, and what amazing kitchen stories there are, of their legendary cooking feats.  Our kitchen now is shiny and new, with recent technology - but the spirit that guides the enterprise is old, and deeply rooted in the family psyche. This is the kind of family that smokes their own meats; dries their own tapa; cooks their own chicharon fresh; cures their own hams; and bakes their own mamon.  I will teach my kids music, and literature, art and history, politics and performing arts - these things, are the endowments they will get from my side of the family. But cooking? Running a kitchen? Secret heritage recipes?... this is their heritage from their father's side. 

Oliver and Narra, with her Ninang Rina (at the back), and Tito Tonton.

In many ways, building the kitchen is a return of sorts, to family roots. The structure is built on family property, right across their ancestral home. I often catch snippets of conversation, with anecdotes of grandparents, and aunties and uncles and their quirks. And their childhood memories - of  the lovely rose garden of old, the pool that has long been covered up, and the dramatic driveway that led to it. I can only imagine what used to be there.  What I see now, is a modern structure, especially striking at night.  It's not even completed, but already, the building is a thing of beauty, with its crisp, clean lines.  We get to see the kitchen a lot at night, because the kitchen runs 24/7, and Oliver gets to visit it after he comes back from work.  Narra's always excited to come along, which I like! I'd rather have her observing real life situations, than being left at home watching t.v.  Here in the kitchen, she's learning that the world does not revolve around her.

A work in progress: the kitchen's exterior, partially completed.

Here, the world revolves around food. A lot of it.  We haven't even really started with our operations, and already, I find the volume of activity dizzying.  As I saw the supplies come in, and the pantry and freezers being filled up, I felt an adrenaline rush. It was exciting to see the once empty stock room come to life.  Even seeing the stock cards in the pantry was enjoyable for me.  My sis-in-law Winnie, however, has that headache on her plate, of figuring out inventory.

First batch of stock cards hanging in the pantry.

The storage racks aren't silent either. They've been making music, with the banging of pots and pans, and woks and  cauldrons as they come into use after weeks of waiting in the wings.  At last! There's fire on the stoves, and the kitchen is very hot.  Summer's upon us and the weather's unbearable at times, but for some reason, I find myself willing to stay in this very hot kitchen. I guess our personal thresholds for comfort are proportionate to the degree of our emotional investment in an activity. An olympic athlete can subject his/her body to all sorts of torturous pain in pursuit of a gold medal. Just as my aircon-loving sister-in-law Rina, suffers countless hours of heat in a high-fire kitchen in pursuit of quality food that meets her standards. She checks every lumpia, and every meatball, making sure they are the right shape and size, before they are even cooked, after which they are subjected to taste tests.  

Storage rack in the cooking area.

Aaaah. The perks (and pitfalls) of hanging out in the kitchen. I have had my fair share of temptation.  A kitchen in the early days of operation sure has a lot of taste tests.  It's a blessing in disguise that the tasks assigned to me are mostly outside the kitchen. Imagine if I stayed there longer and sampled more food! That would be a disastrous turn of events, from a dieter's point of view.

We bought a batch of these, to take home.

Soon, it will be show time! And not just a dress rehearsal. Curtain's up in a week's time. And I am counting the days. I'm so excited. And so is everyone else. The family/board meeting last night ended past midnight, and everyone's fired up to their share of the work as opening night approaches. We got a sneak peek this week, and we liked what we saw.