Zandro Lagman – Year 12 Student
Seventeen-year-old Zandro Lagman’s love of cooking has seen him come up trumps in the Dishing Up Darwin competition, show tourists how to cook bitter gourd and now, tell his own cooking story for the Darwin Fringe Festival.
As part of Eat My Words, a food and storytelling night where five Darwin cooks recreate favourite dishes, Lagman is planning something special, using local tropical ingredients.
“I’m really excited. This is one of the first events where instead of just cooking I’m also going to be telling a story of what I cooked and sharing my cooking background to a lot of people.”
The Darwin High student arrived in Australia in 2012 from Pampanga province in The Philippines.
“If you ask some of the Filipinos, they know that some of the best cooks come from Pampanga,” he says.
“It’s renowned for food.”
Lagman started cooking when his mum wasn’t home in time to make dinner, and never stopped.
“It started with pretty simple Filipino dishes, which is frying stuff, boiling stuff, then they let me help out during festivals when they were preparing big batches of food. And now I cook dinner most of the time.”
Despite his cooking achievements, the year 12 student is thinking about combining his food ambitions with his interest in science.
“When I was really young I thought I might be a scientist, then probably a chef, and now I think I’ll probably combine those two passions… So maybe something about researching why we cook the way we do. I don’t really want to focus on just food be-cause my passion for science would be left out.”
Eat My Words | Thu 13 Jul | 6-8.30pm | Mulch Pit Community Garden.
