Max is 14 years old and he's really excited about cooking food. He loves making other people happy with his special pasta recipe.
I’m very passionate about cooking. I did EXPLO Chef focus program last session and I loved it. Now I’m doing EXPLO 360. I like cooking just about anything, but Italian foods are my favorite. I love to cook pasta and I love to eat pasta. I make this dish called squid and pasta where you have shrimp and scallops and a white wine sauce.
The best part about cooking food is making people happy when you’ve made a good dish. That’s a good feeling. I cook for my family members and friends, and I even cooked for staff members at EXPLO. It was for the Grand Buffet where we cooked for the head staff. I was in charge of cooking 20 pounds of steak. I just added salt and pepper and put it in the oven. It took me an hour and a half. Then I helped other people with sauces and vegetables.
EXPLO Chef is basically like getting a semester of culinary school in two weeks. You go through everything, like searing, roasting, baking — really everything. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, the chefs were very great. Something valuable that I learned from that program is how to work as a team. It was the first time I got to work in an actual kitchen with other people who have the same interest as I do. It’s truly great to work with people who have similar ideas and passions as you, and it’s just a good introduction in general to what working in a real kitchen is like. The people there all have the same goal and have to work together to feed other people. I want to be a chef when I grow up. I’ll probably end up opening my own restaurant, something American-Italian.
I’m going to be here for five weeks in total. I used to go to a regular sleep-away camp for four years and it got really boring. I get bored very easily at those summer camps, but EXPLO has so many different activities. Every day is different. The classes are awesome. And the staff is great.
Fidelia Randmäe