Saturday, February 02, 2008 Home cooking twist By Myra Isabel Magsaysay Sun
I FIRST met Amparito Lhuillier (nee Llamas) when she was our overall Youth Champion for the Ahon Bayan, a group appointed by then Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resource mobilize funds for the needy in society.
Amparito spearheaded all the sectors with her kinetic energy, and the passion and compassion for everything she does. She had an infectious energy that rubbed on us we, too, so we put our hearts and minds to our tasks.
I find a new twist to Amparito, what she calls as “a little history of me” and learning from her the culture of food that evolves in her family.
As a newly wed, she started baking her now popular éclairs for orders and donations to bazaars. Amparito’s restaurant and catering service generated her love for people and food.
Reared by Jaime Garcia Llamas and Juanita “Nita” Cisneros Llamas in a home guided by wealth of good, Catholic values and Spanish home cooking, Amparito gained from these influences her skill in cooking and her spiritual uprightness. From Nita she learned to make a superb maja blanca and she shares the recipe here.
Henri and Angelita Lhuillier instilled a dictum of hard work, that is why none of Amparito’s children are “lazy and pensionado” (i.e. living like a pensioner). The discipline to eat what’s on their table was a motto at home.
In a tet-a-tet at lunch in Gustavian, Amparito was in an eye-catching in purple accented by chic necklace and Guess bangles.
A sample of her menu that day included fresh ginger tea, cereal and fruit, Thai tamarind and pomelos. Asked what her favorite drink is and she said it’s water detoxified with lemon slices. Vegetables are a premium, especially eggplant casserole. Dinner is chicken malunggay soup and baked fish with garlic, olive oil, herbs and breadcrumbs. Homemade dessert is oatmeal-and-rice crispy cookies, and Queen Elizabeth cake.
We had tomato soup as part of our lunch. That soup had me slurping. Plus we had potato-nut bread dipped in balsamic. The Amparito Salad harmonizes hummus, squid, shitake mushroom and watermelon. It was a blending of vibrant colors.
Sole a la Michel was a healthy treat of roulade of sole toped with caviar and a blend of risotto spinach. Dessert was a flourless chocolate tart and candied oranges, piquant and sweet; and pistachio ice cream for toppers.
Amparito is with Chaines des Rotisseurs, an international lifestyle society that promotes good food, and she has a scholarship program.
She is an educator with a resume as catechist and a Spanish teacher in American schools. She has touched many people—heart and soul.
