Once upon a time, all Juris, a young bride, knew was how to boil water.

It was out of Juris Tiu’s desire to please her husband that she tried her best to learn how to cook.

It was not an easy journey, one that took a trial-by-error route, but in the end, she made it, even becoming a home-based culinary expert. Today, not only her husband is happy with what she serves on the table. Their family friends and guests at home have praises and positive reviews for the dishes that she personally prepares for them, or the bread and pastries that she and her husband give them on special occasions.

But once upon a time, all Juris, a young bride, knew was how to boil water. She finally had to learn how to cook when their helper left in a huff because she had been caught throwing away leftover munggo. “I did not think it was right that any food should be put to waste, so I had to tell her and she felt bad,” she recalls.

Juris ended up taking charge of the kitchen chores. She relates, “If I bought fish and intended to fry it, I would call up my relatives in the province first and ask them how to do it. So, they would instruct me step by step.”

Very often, she and her husband, Art, ended up eating lechon manok (roasted chicken) which she bought from the neighborhood broiled chicken stand. “It became so often that my husband commented that because of too much lechon manok, he was beginning to have dandruffs.”

It was even a source of embarrassment because soon the neighbors noticed that she frequently bought fast food fare, and putting two and two together, they realized she did not know how to cook. A kindly lady next door came to the rescue. She first taught her how to cook Beef with Broccoli.

Thus began her serious foray into the world of culinary arts. Following her neighbor’s instruction, she cooked all by herself the beef and broccoli stew “which, my husband said, was delicious,” Juris says. Although she took it that her husband praised her more for the effort than the taste of the food itself, she was somehow emboldened. She decided it was time to learn and so, she bought a Nora Daza cookbook.

Juris realized she could follow the recipes. She next bought other authors’ recipe books and was pleasantly surprised she had more hits than misses. She was also unfamiliar with some terms. She had to research what they meant. But on the whole, she was making progress.

Start your Monday mornings with Juris as she dishes out easy-to-prepare and hearty meals for the family.

It wasn’t long before she enrolled in one-day culinary arts classes. She would bring home samples of the day’s project and again, her husband would give her his thumbs up. In their travels abroad, she enrolled in one-day culinary classes. “I aimed for authenticity,” she explains. “So, when we were in Korea, I made sure to learn how to make kimchi the right way.”

Cooking from recipes and attending short-term classes would go on for a while until she told her husband that she wanted to enroll in a proper culinary arts school not for one day, not for one week, but for the duration of a course. At that time, the Center for Culinary Arts along Katipunan Road in Quezon City had just been opened by the Guerrero family. Juris enrolled in the second batch.

It was a two-year course “where I finally learned all the proper terms. It could be such a waste of time if you have to open the dictionary or call someone else to ask what this or that term means. This time, it became automatic for me.”

As part of the course, she had an on-the-job training at the Mandarin Hotel. She learned how to cook from the best chefs, how to manage a kitchen and even how to cook for hundreds of people.

When asked if she knew how to bake pudding, a regular in hotel breakfast buffets, she said, “I learned it at Mandarin. It was also here that I learned all the tricks, like what one needs to do if the rice that one cooked turns out to be hilaw (raw).”

Getting her certificate and receiving an award during her graduation have enhanced Juris’ self-confidence when it comes to culinary chores. More importantly, though, receiving constant praises from her husband and their friends have inspired her to do even better.

She has mastered various breads and pastries, and comes up with her version of Stollen bread which she also gives away during Christmas, along with her putok bread which her so-called fans swear by. Assisting her in the kitchen is their old family driver who, she kids, can start his own bakery when he retires.

Between the two of them, they have baked hundreds of loaves of bread which Art and she gave away as presents in past Christmases. Last year, she also made 200 hams which they gifted to their friends, family and business associates during the holiday season.

Sharing her masterpieces is Juris’ way of thanking the Lord for allowing her the privilege and pleasure of cooking. That her husband Art is proud of her culinary prowess makes her happy and inspired.

Juris is no longer the shy wife and woman burdened by her lack of knowledge in the kitchen. If the way to her man’s heart is through his stomach, Juris has indeed made sure of her place in Art’s heart.

For Juris, cooking is not just a hobby. “It has become, for me, a platform for sharing my knowledge and expertise. I am still experimenting and still learning, but I feel more confident now. I also realize that I was never alone, for I had heard stories of women who have had difficulty with cooking. I tell them that cooking is fun but what is important you give yourself to it, and you allow yourself enough time to learn.

“You can’t turn out specialties overnight. It is something that you learn. Cooking is a skill and an art, but it is something that can be learned,” Juris concludes.

Starting tomorrow, 23 September, Juris Tiu will host KALANpag, a culinary show on TribuneNOW’s online television. She will demonstrate how to cook dishes in the traditional ways before showing how they can be updated in the modern ways, while guesting many other experts as well as hobbyists who will share the secrets to making their specialties.

What is unique about KALANpag is that all the recipes are culled from the cookbook put together by Liberato P. Fernandez, the father of the Daily Tribune’s publisher and president Willie Fernandez. The cookbook was published over 80 years ago!

The recipes come from the different cultures that have influenced Filipino fare, including Chinese and Spanish cuisine. The dishes are simple, wholesome and made from scratch — way before bouillons and ready-made sauces.

Juris will also show ways to update some of these dishes in keeping with these times of speed and instant gratification.

Watch out for her cooking show tomorrow, Monday’s KALANpag, on our Facebook Page (Daily Tribune) and TribuneNOW Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxWHGr_jD1oXPe02iQe3yBw). Start your week with a culinary journey from the past to the present.