For practical reasons, the chat with NEWS should be done via Zoom; is that the popular and prestigious chef William Calabrese He has very intense work days. He divides much of his time between hosting his daily TV show live and the international culinary teaching school he runs. After his departure from “Argentine Cooks”, back in September 2020, he returned to open television, as the new host of the magazine “what a morning” by The Nine. “With Gato Dumas in 1997 we were already on this channel. Then I had the opportunity to be on all of them. But meeting people from that time again… the truth is that it is a wonderful group of people,” he confesses.
Calabrese, born into a family with Sicilian roots, was a medical student until, in his fifth year, at 25, he dropped out and approached the famous chef Gato Dumas to ask him to be his disciple since, at that time, practically no culinary schools existed. He started as a cleaning employee in one of his restaurants, until he became head chef, in just three years. Later, his knowledge, experience and didactic capacity allowed him to open numerous establishments, participate in multiple programs on the small screen, some together with his mentor, and with the latter found, in 1998, the formerly called Cat Gastronomy College. Dumas. Currently, that same entity acquired the stature of an Institute and has several offices distributed throughout Argentina (Buenos Aires, Rosario, Pilar), as well as in South America (Montevideo, Bogotá and Barranquilla).
News: How did you experience this return?
Guillermo Calabrese: It amuses me a lot to spread gastronomy, make it “easy” for the public. I even did it on the radio, which is almost Kafkaesque; so, imagine, communicating again on broadcast television is very rewarding.
News: However, “Qué Mañana” is a magazine.
Calabrese: Undoubtedly, it has a format and the concept of the morning magazine where there are different nuances of information, and even entertainment; but the axis goes through teaching how to cook. The program is two hours long and one is dedicated to that. If I want to become academic, I do it in my classes at the Institute, which, although I don’t lose sympathy, have another formal teaching degree. On the other hand, on TV, I never lose sight of the fact that the person on the other side of the screen could have been my mother, as she was my reference for so many years.. Today she is no more, but I keep thinking about her, as if she is still watching me. Precisely, I speak to the lady or man who looks at me so that they get hooked, encourage and cook for their family or friends. In this way, the explanation that I make carries a kind of translation of the preparations into a plain and descriptive language.
News: There is now a lot of information about different foods in the world on the one hand and the current economic situation is difficult on the other. In this context, does the way of teaching cooking change?
Calabrese: Overly expensive dishes should be avoided. I do not put a brake, much less in the channel they tell me “don’t do this or do the other”. Every day I cook a triad of menu: the entrance, a main and the dessert. The fundamental criterion is to count all the modifications or substitutions that could be made with the ingredients used. But I do not stop making a salmon, although I clarify that it could be replaced with haddock, sole, trout or a river fish. Then, I think that the media, sometimes willingly and sometimes unintentionally, are very federal; and what one does reaches everywhere. For this reason, I never think of the recipe book based on what is obtained in the supermarkets of the Chinatown of Bajo Belgrano, because they are watching me from Formosa, Mendoza or even from abroad. I know because they communicate through other alternative networks.
News: Could it be said that it is like a continuation of what you did in “Argentine Cooks”?
Calabrese: It is only identical in the fact that it is cooked, but the way is different. In “Cocineros…” everything was gargantuan, almost bordering on the bizarre due to the enormous amounts, people swimming inside pots. Of course, there was also a very federal emblem with part of the team from mobile phones in different regions of the country. Welcome, because that is the role of Public TV. Here, on the other hand, no; however, we are not thinking only of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo. I am happy with how the program is done since, being live and daily, it gives me the possibility of preparing different dishes and simple processes, with the concept of a homemade meal.
News: Do you think that a reality show like “Masterchef celebrity” helps culinary diffusion?
Calabrese: During the confinement of the pandemic I spent a year or so without going out, and I got hooked on the first edition; but from the culinary point of view, he did not leave me much specificity. There the line ran to see who won, who lost, who burned the products, who did it wrong or who was mistreated worse at the time of evaluation. Very entertaining, not to mention. The very high ratings it had, were for a reason. Now, in the second, the characters changed, and so-and-so I didn’t like, or so-and-so bored me and I stopped seeing him. Although gastronomy is present, I do not think that the main axis is culinary diffusion. Although yes, perhaps, they do it indirectly. The juries are fantastic, each one with a different characteristic, where I understand that the model, somehow scripted, is that so-and-so plays the bad guy and I, who know him personally, know that he is not. And the other has to play nice and… well. It’s great as a show, but there is no detailed description of the recipes due to lack of time. However, we are talking about cooking. Perhaps I will take someone to take a course here at the Institute.
