Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Cooking demo

This is me, clearly, just before my cooking demo. They say a picture tells..........so can you tell? Can you tell that I am..........absolutely sh##ing myself? Yeah, thats me putting on my 'game face'. Why? well to my right there is a nasty big TV camera staring me down, and my left - a young reporter with a big red microphone. The cooking is the easy bit, just a bit of assembly really, the hard bit is the talking. Talking in Spanish that is. I can speak a bit of Spanish like "when is the closest hamburger", but for this demo I have to talk about concepts, techniques, ingredients and flavours, and it has to make sense.
I have pre-prepared all my answers, about five decent sentences, and its occurring to me (as I stare into the plate) that its not unlike a gymnastics routine on the mat, or floor, or whatever it is where they go from one corner to the other doing flips and twists.
Im my opening sentence where I describe the nature of my dish, there is a pretty hard string of words - my opening flip. Nail that sentence and its smooth sailing through the core of the routine. Come the last sentence tho and its time for some real moves: a string on 'que' 'lo' and 'queiro' followed by a four syllable multi-vowelled tongue twister!
Good news is it all went alright, the reporter (thank god) didn't ask me to repeat anything. I think the judges would have given me a high seven; not a comp winner but I didn't walk off in shame.
By the way I was making a tapas with ox tail, morcilla, panceta de jamon, and goats cheese. It was supposed to represent the cultural and horticultural fertility of this area - Castilla y Leon.
Ill try to get my hands on the footage when it airs. Should be interesting.

9 comments:

  1. I want to see that footage!
    PS: morcilla?

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  2. ha ha Janos! I would have thought stringing 5 coherent sentences together would have been hard for you at the best of times.....AND in Spanish AND on Camera!!! I like your work....and I LOVE that pic, tells it all!

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  3. That's a very personal question .... before I can tell you I need to know who you are 'Farm'.....

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  4. yeeeeeaaah who is farm and what is iki,
    morcilla is blood snag, is good!

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  5. Nice one J, most impressive for a first time. You'll be the Nadia Comaneci of the spanish tv chefs in no time

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