PUERTO PRINCESA, Republic of the Philippines — Food service specialists from Marine Wing Support Squadron 172 attended a cooking class at Blue Ginger, a local Filipino restaurant, here April 24.
MWSS-172 is here as part of Task Force Palawan participating in Balikatan 2012. BK12 is an annual bilateral training exercise designed to build joint interoperability between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the U.S. military.
The class revolved around the five vital components to good food: great ingredients, good technique, love what you do, salt and pepper, and keep it simple said Tim Freeman, executive chef and owner of Blue Ginger.
The most important of these five components is loving the job, according to Freeman.
“There’s a certain kind of person that can be a cook,” said Freeman. “You have to love what you do.”
Freeman took four hours out of his day to teach the Marines the art of cooking which included the two most important ingredients in any food.
“Salt and pepper are the fundamental building blocks to making great food,” said Freeman. “It separates good food from great food.”
The class also offered up opportunities for all of the chefs to learn from one another and share their different techniques.
“It’s good to learn different styles of cooking,” said Lance Cpl. Sergio M. Salazar, a food service specialist with MWSS-172, Marine Wing Support Group 17, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III Marine Expeditionary Force. “It opens up your mind [to different styles of cooking] and now we can pass them on to one another.”
The food service specialists can now take the lessons they learned from Freeman and apply them to their jobs in both austere and garrison environments.
“I learned that I really need to put in the passion and time it takes to make food that much better,” said Lance Cpl. David B. LaMothe, a food service specialist with MWSS-172. “This opportunity was definitely worth taking.”
BK12, in its 28th iteration, also includes several humanitarian civic assistance projects across Palawan, ground military training operations on both Palawan and Luzon provinces and a natural disaster response command post exercise in Luzon province.