Pa­trons at­tend­ing the third edi­tion of the in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar Priests Can Cook fund-rais­ing event on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 27, at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain have been promised a feast of gourmet food plus mu­sic from cham­pi­ons. This fundrais­ing event is be­ing host­ed joint­ly by the staff of the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) and the staff of Arch­bish­op’s House, with sup­port from the past stu­dents of St Joseph’s Con­vent (PoS) and St Mary’s Col­lege, two of the icon­ic and old­est sec­ondary schools in this coun­try.

CEBM is re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the 118 pub­lic pri­ma­ry schools owned by the Catholic Church in T&T. This rep­re­sents some 25 per cent of the pub­lic pri­ma­ry schools in the coun­try with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 29,000 chil­dren of all eth­nic­i­ties and re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tions in at­ten­dance.

Church au­thor­i­ties are un­hap­py with the rel­a­tive­ly high num­ber of “un­der-per­form­ing” schools in its fold and ac­cepts that they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. In oth­er words, they have to help them­selves to help the chil­dren at their schools. Thus was born Priests Can Cook in 2017.

The prof­it from the first edi­tion was used to fix the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture in four of the need­i­est schools in south and north Trinidad. The pro­ceeds of last year’s event are be­ing used to fund a lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme in ten of the un­der-per­form­ing schools. The pro­gramme which com­menced last month, in­cludes coach­ing and mon­i­tor­ing to track the progress of the prin­ci­pals and se­nior teach­ers of the se­lect­ed schools. The prof­its from this year’s event will be used to ad­dress 12 of the re­main­ing un­der per­form­ing schools.

Priests Can Cook show­cas­es the culi­nary skills of the priests, dea­cons and parish­ioners from the 61 parish­es of the church spread through­out the coun­try, with a few guest chefs, all in a set­ting of ca­ma­raderie and fel­low­ship.

While most of the cooks will bring their al­ready-pre­pared dish­es to the venue, pa­trons will see their meals cooked on spot by some chefs.

Among those cook­ing on spot will be Fr Ken­neth Ass­ing of Blan­chisseuse parish, an ac­com­plished chef in his own right, the well-known Dea­con Derek Wal­cott (a chef who pays great at­ten­tion to de­tail) and for­mer CIC goal-keep­er who is now a pro­fes­sion­al chef, Michel Pe­ters of Mt Lam­bert parish.

One thing is cer­tain, the cooks will de­liv­er gourmet meals, re­gard­less of the parish from which they come. The CIC past stu­dents will have their spe­cial­ly pre­pared roast-pig that al­ways finds favour when­ev­er it is served and some at­trac­tive dish­es are com­ing from St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege and the two Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­leges (San Fer­nan­do and Ch­agua­nas)

A mouth-wa­ter­ing se­lec­tion of spe­cial­ly-se­lect­ed desserts, in­clud­ing Haa­gen Dazs ice-cream will be served up to round-off the food sec­tion. The Con­vent Past Pupils are co-or­di­nat­ing this sec­tion so ex­pect noth­ing but the best.

And what of the en­ter­tain­ment? A star-stud­ded cast of en­ter­tain­ers will de­liv­er mu­sic be­fit­ting the cham­pi­ons they are. Start­ing things off will be two fam­i­ly groups who are fast mak­ing a name for them­selves and were crowd-pleasers at this year’s telethon host­ed by the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty. The first group is the Car­tar fam­i­ly, com­pris­ing Dax, Phillip and An­gelique. The sec­ond group is the Good­ing fam­i­ly who will de­liv­er a most in­ter­est­ing reper­toire.

Com­ing up next will be the mul­ti-times parang cham­pi­ons who no longer par­tic­i­pate in com­pe­ti­tions, the ever-pop­u­lar Los Alum­nos de San Juan, led by the undis­put­ed Parang Queen and pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ali­cia Jag­gas­sar. The full band will be in at­ten­dance and she promis­es to have pa­trons danc­ing through­out the band’s ses­sion.

One of the best re­ceived pre­sen­ta­tions on Trinidad Night at the re­cent Car­ifes­ta XIV cel­e­bra­tions was that by Rik­ki Jai. The poster boy of chut­ney so­ca will be on stage at Priests Can Cook 2019 and pa­trons can ex­pect the same type of high-en­er­gy, pleas­ing per­for­mance that Rik­ki Jai de­liv­ered at the same venue last month.

The clos­ing act is none oth­er than reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on, BPTT Rene­gades Steel Or­ches­tra. The band has just re­turned from two over­seas per­for­mances so they are in rip­ping form and anx­ious to please.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, tick­ets for this pack­age of gourmet food and cham­pi­on mu­sic costs just $275. Tick­ets are avail­able from all RC Parish of­fices and Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain. Pa­trons al­so have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to win some at­trac­tive door prizes and se­cure park­ing has been arranged in an en­closed area at the venue.

Pa­trons should note that as they en­joy a won­der­ful Fri­day evening lime to raise funds to im­prove the stan­dard of ed­u­ca­tion in RC pub­lic pri­ma­ry schools, it has been agreed that a per­cent­age of the net prof­its will go to­wards the re­lief ef­fort to as­sist the ill-fat­ed cit­i­zens in the Ba­hamas.

High pro­file cooks in the mix

There are a num­ber of high-pro­file cooks turn­ing out for the re­spec­tive parish­es at which they at­tend week­end mass. Their names will re­main a se­cret for now but look out for them on the day of the event. (Here is a tip: Look for many of them in the Mar­aval/Paramin/Cameron clus­ter head­ed by Fr Ron Mendes who led a large team of cooks at last year’s event).

En­ter­tain­ment by the cham­pi­ons