With Thanksgiving in the rearview, the holiday season is in full swing. While many folks kept their gatherings small in 2020, more folks are celebrating this year with family and friends. And that often includes sharing a meal.
So today’s episode is all about food. Aldrin Agas, chef and owner of Kuya’s Cooking, joins us to talk about his own culinary journey and tips for improving your kitchen chops. That includes how he launched his catering and popup business, where to get ingredients for your Filipino pantry, and how to get your hands on recipes.
Listen to the full episode.
TRANSCRIPT
Kaitlin Milliken: Hello, and welcome to the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken, and this show is obviously made by BOSFilipinos.
With Thanksgiving in the rearview, the holiday season is in full swing. While many folks kept their gatherings small in 2020, more people are celebrating this year with family and friends. That often includes sharing a meal.
So today’s episode is all about food. Aldrin Agas, chef and owner of Kuya’s Cooking, joins us to talk about his own culinary journey and tips for improving your kitchen chops. That includes how he launched his catering and popup business, where to get ingredients for your Filipino pantry, and how to get your hands on recipes.
Thank you so much Aldrin for taking the time to be on our show.
Aldrin Agas: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and an honor to be interviewed by you.
Kaitlin Milliken: So just to get started, tell me about how you got interested in cooking. When did you get started?
Aldrin Agas: Oh, I've always had an interest in cooking. It's definitely been a lifelong passion of mine. I think one of them, one of my fondest memories, or earliest memories of cooking is being taken to my Lola's house. This was before I was old enough to watch over my younger brother, but she would always cook us really simple things. And, one of our dishes that we loved was just simple eggs and rice. And I remember being just barely able to be able to safely operate the stove. I asked my grandma, “Grandma, can I make eggs? Can I make eggs?” I made my best attempt at scrambled eggs as I could, and now that was back when I was probably seven or eight years old at the time. Yeah. Probably how I first got interested in cooking.
And you can almost say that it's kind of in my blood too, because my dad was a chef in the Navy. My parents usually tasked me with cooking food. I always wanted to help him prep whatever needs to be prepared for cooking.
Kaitlin Milliken: There's a big jump between learning how to cook eggs, and opening your own catering business. Tell me a little bit about the learning process. What really helped you develop your culinary skills?
Aldrin Agas: It's always a lifelong sort of love for learning. Because there's always something new to learn, whether it's a new ingredient, a new technique, a new way to fuse different sorts of cultures and different flavors, or if it's a new way to present a food or present a dish. I feel that you always have to have that passion for learning when it comes to cooking.
For myself, I've been really blessed to, to first have, have my parents teach me all these wonderful recipes from home. But as I've had transition into being a being a chef, learning how to cook food professionally, I definitely attributed to just a lot of love research and more importantly, being able to have a really great network of folks that have been in the industry and have been able to have show me different things show me different tricks and just having a really wide network of support to kind of guide me along this journey. So it's definitely been exciting and fun, and I can't wait to see where this journey takes me next.
Kaitlin Milliken: Let's get a little deeper into Kuya’s Cooking. When did you start it, and what inspired you to launch that?
Aldrin Agas: So I've always had a passion for hospitality. I've been in the hospitality business for for over 10 years now. So I've done everything from bartending, to managing a bar, to sales and events and so it was a way to marry my passion for hospitality with my passion for food. And right around 2017 I'd say is when we when myself my brother and one of my closest friends we were all on the couch just kind of kind of taking it all in and just talking about dreams and aspirations that we came up with the name of Kuya’s cooking and it kind of stuck. So for a period between 2017 and 2020 I had a really simple website. It was just something to kind of tease the senses, and I would make some dishes every now and again for friends and family.
Right around when the pandemic hit, it was really an eye opening thing for me just because the whole hospitality industry dropped off from top to bottom. And it gave me a chance to kind of really assess, what do I really want? What do I really want to do with my life? And what do I want to do special? That's really what gave me that kick in the pants to say, “You got to do this. You got to make it happen.” So I went through the formal process of starting up Kuya’s cooking right at the back end of 2020. And then I officially joined Foundation Kitchen, which is where I operate out of now. Foundation Kitchen is a shared kitchen space. Some shout out to all the members of Foundation Kitchen, by the way. And that's where I operate now and where I've been operating since January of 2021.
At the beginning of the year, I did limited food releases. I did a few things between January and April. And I had a few couple months to just kind of take a step back, reassess. There are crazy things going on in my life during that time as well. So just take another step back to say, “Where do I want Kuya’s Cooking to go?” At the end of July, I did my first pop up. And I've been going strong ever since. So it's definitely been an awesome journey. And, the thing that prompted Kuya’s Cooking was just being able to share my love for Filipino food, share my love for food in general, to everyone and specifically to the Boston area. There's definitely a lack of Filipino food and of Filipino restaurants in general. And I'm looking to change that.
Kaitlin Milliken: So Aldrin, how can folks eat your food? How can they get in touch with you and get access to everything that you're making?
Aldrin Agas: So right now the number one way to do that is through my pop ups. Take a look at my website. It's www.kuyascooking.com. I have a schedule of my upcoming pop-ups. You can also contact me directly if you want to do catering orders of some sort. And yes, I think the ultimate goal, definitely the ultimate goal of Kuya’s Cooking is to eventually open up a brick and mortar restaurant that's accessible to the greater Boston community. So that would definitely be the ultimate goal here. But for now, please support my pop-ups. It definitely helps to get the word out about Filipino food in general. And it’ll definitely help Kuya’s Cooking take off and hopefully get to the point where we're able to open up a permanent location.
Kaitlin Milliken: Tell me about your first pop up. Is there a memorable moment that really sticks with you when you think about that experience?
Aldrin Agas: Yeah, I would say the main thing from my pop ups and like one thing that really, really sticks out to me is when I get a chance to talk with someone, during all the busy moments that will pop up. If I do get a chance to talk to someone and I've heard this quite a bit, I ask them, “Is this your first time having Filipino food?” Sometimes you will get that rare “yes.” But I follow that up with asking them, “Is this your first time having Filipino food in Boston?” And I would say nine times out of 10 folks say “yes.”
That just warms my heart, just knowing that people's first experience when it comes to Filipino food and in New England. Filipino restaurants are kind of few and far between in New England right now. And yeah, wouldn't have hurt to have another Filipino restaurant in the area.
Kaitlin Milliken: Let's talk about cooking. Not only are folks looking for ways to eat Filipino food at restaurants and at pop-ups, some folks may be interested in learning how to do some cooking at home. What guidance do you have for those folks?
Aldrin Agas: I would say and this applies not just to Filipino food but in general… I would say or actually I’ll quote Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus for this one.
Kaitlin Milliken: Excellent choice.
Aldrin Agas: “Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy.” I really think that learning how to cook, especially learning to cook a specific dish, it takes time. It takes trial and error. Sometimes you make something that's not so good. Trust me I've had my fair share.
And, really learning that when it comes to recipes, don't be afraid to improvise. A recipe is never set in stone. And sometimes you have to make do with what you have in your kitchen or your pantry. So, feel free to talk about ingredients. Feel free to say, “Maybe I like a little bit more spicy or a little bit more salty. Maybe I'll add a little bit of this. Add a little bit of that.” Really make the make the dish your own. And really, really listen to your gut. Because Lord knows there's a lot of bad recipes. And I feel like if you have that mentality of really putting yourself out there and trying out new things, you really can't go wrong.
Kaitlin Milliken: Let's get a little deeper into recipes. So when it comes to Filipino cooking, you can find stuff online. If you speak Tagalog, sometimes there's videos of people. You can hit up relatives. Where can people get started? If they're like, “I want to eat this, but I have no idea what even goes into it at all.”
Aldrin Agas: I would say that for one — just to plug you all — go to a BOSFilipinos event and just ask around. I'm sure everyone has their own awesome take on whether it be adobo or sinigang, dinuguan on maybe you'll even run into me and we can chat about food. There's actually a pretty surprising amount of Filipinos here in Boston and I definitely think that it's definitely evidenced by like my pop ups there are a ton of Filipinos around. So definitely go up to the Filipino meetups. But if you're looking for a specific website, if you want to really get granular about it, one of my favorites to go to for just entertainment value too is Panlasang Pinoy. So I believe the guy's name is Vanjo Morano. And, he's always entertaining. He posts pretty regularly. So if you're looking for a recipe, I’d definitely go there. But again, recipes are always up for interpretation. So feel free to ask around. Get different opinions on recipes and let the wind take you where it may. Yeah.
Kaitlin Milliken: My second cooking question has to do with ingredients. Where do you get some of the harder to find Filipino staples when you're making your dishes?
Aldrin Agas: So for one, like I would think that the number one ingredient that I use pretty often that is kind of hard to get is bagoong. So for the audience that is not familiar, bagoong is a salted shrimp paste that's used in a lot of Filipino cooking. Bagoong is actually pretty difficult to find if you don't have a car at the moment. And that's actually something that I hope to change as well, better access to Filipino ingredients.
Speaking here and now, if you want to get really great Filipino ingredients, if you want to support a local Filipino business, I would say Sure Pinoy down in Quincy. That's the number one place to go to for Filipino ingredients. And then if you poke around, there are a few Asian grocery stores. It's definitely hit or miss. But sometimes Asian grocery stores in the area will have a Filipino section where you are able to get bagoong and like none that I can recall in the immediate downtown Boston area. But if you expand your search to Everett, Malden, those areas, sometimes you'll find Asian groceries with Filipino ingredients.
Kaitlin Milliken: Great. So we're sort of moving into the holiday season and that's a big time for — hopefully this year — gatherings and food. Tell me what one of your favorite holiday Filipino dishes is to eat and why.
Aldrin Agas: I would say, so I don't cook this that often. So I always find I tend to cook it during the holidays just because it's nice and rich. It's also, by the way, the dish I submitted when I auditioned for Master Chef a few years back. I love cooking kare kare. It's one of those things that's awesome on a cold winter day to warm the soul. That mix of bagoong, peanuts, peanut butter — who doesn't love peanut butter? And then have some nice green veggies in there, and an awesome protein of your choice. I usually go with a nice kind of chop but you can go with whatever.
Kaitlin Milliken: My final question for you Aldrin, what's one kitchen tip that you want to leave with the folks listening?
Aldrin Agas: Definitely invest in a good knife and cutting board.Those are two touch points that you use to cook with on a daily basis. So you don't need a super expensive knife. You can actually get a really good knife for under 50 bucks. But a really awesome knife and cutting board would be one tip. And then I'll actually throw in a bonus tip for actual food. For all your proteins brine them. Whether it's chicken breast pork, brine them because it just takes the flavor and when you do cook it, it brings the juiciness of the meat to a whole new level.
Kaitlin Milliken: Awesome. Thank you so much, Aldrin, for taking the time.
Aldrin Agas: Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.
Kaitlin Milliken: This has been the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken. Music for our show was made by Matt Garamella. Special thanks to Aldrin for making this episode special. To learn more about Aldrin’s business visit kuya’scooking.com
If you like our show, you can subscribe to the BOSFilipinos Podcast on your streaming platform of choice. You can also follow us on Instagram, @bosfilipinos, for more. If you have ideas of what we should cover, you can let us know at bosfilipinos.com. Happy holidays, and see you in 2022.