Everyone has had a dream of some sort. Whether it’s traveling or even getting a job that you’ve always wanted.

One of Martha Sacay’s is to become a sous chef. She and her family have been cooking together at home and haven’t had fast food
in years because of this. Her family has inspired her to cook more and she has made a stronger bond with her family in the process. Sacay wants to spread the feeling of her family’s love one dish at a time. A sous chef is a culinarian that is an assistant to the head chef, and they take care of things in the kitchen that the head chef can’t.

“Your executive chef is usually ordering all the food and making sure the kitchen is stocked and doing all that,” culinary student Corey Fulhorst said. “Your executive chef is your head chef. They’re the top. Your sous chef is gonna be the one that is on the line doing the cooking and making sure the plates are out correctly and the food’s cooked right.”

Sacay wasn’t always a part of FHSD; she moved from the Philippines when she was in second grade. She was inspired to have this dream of becoming a sous chef by her enjoyment of her grandmother’s Filipino cooking. And that interested her to want to try to use all sorts of spices on different dishes of food. She cooks things like pancakes and waffles, ube donuts (ube is a purple yam), rice with chicken, rice adobo and sinigang.

“Adobo is meat covered in soy sauce, Sinigang is a meat soup with vegetables,” Sacay describes. “I recommend the Adobo with chicken and the Sinigang with pork.”

Her father usually cooks the meals at home, though Sacay loves to help out. In the future, Sacay plans on taking a higher learning class for becoming a sous chef to improve her cooking skills, though it isn’t required. The class is culinary school, similar to what Fulhorst took. She plans on traveling to Japan to work.

“I like everything about Japan, it just interests me,” Sacay said. “Their language, food, buildings, culture, etc.”

Sacay was influenced by her family to start cooking, and that has connected her family with their culture. She has turned that into a dream of her own, and hopefully those dreams can come true. “Though again the head and sous chefs have similar roles, they are to make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to,” Sacay said. “But specifically for the sous chef, they train their workers with cooking skills.”