1.''Culinary Center & Cookery Club''. A project that a lot of people already love and can't wait for the next lesson. What's the secret behind this successful project?
-The People. It is always the people. You just have to listen very carefully. We followed exactly what people wanted, nothing more, nothing less… They are the inspiration for anything new, they are the drive for keep us on developing, they are the energy in our space.
2. Food, recipes, new and stylish chefs, and a lot of funky restaurants. Is food a trend all over the world?
-Food is all about the development of a society. Everything is all around food. Even surving has a social character, hunting, cooking, eating… all are necessities in the history of the human kind. As societies develop these necessities just change character, but they are always in our lives. So, new foods appear, stylish chefs experiment with new concepts and funky restaurants try to captivate our attention. At the end we will see that all these are just socializing with people around good food.
3. Cooking. A typical daily survivor need or a deeper kind of matter..? Can cooking replace sessions with our phychologist?
There are several reasons on Why Cooking?
-First and foremost, cooking has been always a necessity. But even as a necessity to feed ourselves so we can survive, it can’t be separated from its social character. We need other people to eat with us. So these two are actually one.
Another reason is the perception of food (to simply understand it) and the only real way is to engage with it, thus to cook it. This way you understand, enjoy, pleasure, experiment good food for your family and yourselves.
Among modern and crucial issues we face is people’s high demand to eliminate food spoilage and limit industrialized food in their everyday diet. Only cooking your own products, can control what you eat!
So as you can see cooking is all about communicating, relieving from a hard day’s work, providing nutrition to you and your family – what more can you ask?
4.Personally I think pastry lessons are so difficult and they need special skills. Am I wrong?
-Yes! Things should not be that complicated in life. After all for all those who prepare desserts for their families, they doesn’t have to accomplish a high level of pastry techniques and they can’t afford to own specialized machinery. So let’s just exercise with the basics and you will see that pastry lessons are a love you won’t let go.
5.After a day full of cooking lessons, are you really in the mood to go out and have dinner with friends? Honestly!
-I consider myself to be lucky. I do exactly what I love. This is my freedom! I can talk all day about cooking and food. Food takes a different character within the day. So actually it is extremely interesting to me, living and working with something that changes everyday! It is never boring ☺
6. A person that has not a clue about cooking,-and that doesn't have to do only with men believe me!- what are the main dishes that must learn to prepare, in order to eat healthy and take all the basic ingredients for his body and soul without losing time and money?
-You are speaking on dishes and recipes… I will answer to you with techniques. It sounds weird and confusing, but as you will see everyone can be a cook.
By learning the basic techniques, you can cook anything. That means all the different ways to cook vegetebles, meat, fish, legumes. This is no more than 12 basic lessons. The importance of what you will learn at the end is priceless, because you will be in a position to cook with whatever ingredients you have.
7.Men are better chefs or it's just a myth.....?
-They are… because they can be more focused on a single task, while we are multi tasking persons, we are also more chaotic. Also we can’t work the same as men do. We become mothers… we have other necessities in our lives and this rarely change (maybe for better). Of course this is a personal view of things.
8.You are a specialist not only from the ''Cookery Club'' lessons, but also from your long time experience as a food journalist in the most reliable magazines. What from your point of view, what is the secret of a successful restaurant?
-Working hard towards many directions. Being a restaurateur doesn’t mean that you had some saved money aside and the best investment is to open a restaurant. Actually on the contrary. Americans say that if you want to make a small fortune from restaurant business, start from a big one ☺ That means that you have to control perfectly a perfect location, sales, marketing, expenses, personnel, product and service, ambience, all in accordance with the general circumstances of your state. A very skillfull situation if you want. This makes a restaurant successful. The rest are just luck.
9.If you could cook for 5 celebrities in a special dinner, in a big table, who would you choose and why?
-I would like to cook for all 5 simultaneously and share the pleasure of dining, while exchanging views…
A spiritual person like Dalai Lama who guides people in simplicity and spiritual life, A technologist like Timothy John who invented the www, A philosopher like Noam Chomsky who has influenced the world with his psychological-anarcho-political ideas, A cosmologist like Alan Guth who has revolutionized our understanding of the Big Bang and the large scale structure of the universe and A genetist like Craig Venter who was among the first ones to sequence the human genome. This would be a day that would change my life!!!
10.Food is also memories...What are your own food memories as a child.
-The greatest memory I have is that in my family we enjoyed being together every weekend and eat at my grandmother’s house. Sometimes we used to argue, sometimes to laugh, sometimes to cry and sometimes to love! This is the greatness of food!
11. Your next goals are…......?
-Who knows? I just want to see development in the field where I work and live everyday. Art, Food, Pleasure, Survival, Socialization, Happiness, Business, all together mixed in a great combination. That is the original idea of the Cookery Club Mathimata Mageirikis after all.
