MANILA -- Senator Imee Marcos is admittedly not a chef. Instead, she calls herself a “gangster kusinera,” having been punished all the time.

“I must have been a really naughty kid because I was always punished to the kitchen every day,” Marcos told ABS-CBN News. “I got punished for being intrimitida. I always had sassy answers to all kinds of things.

“I was very outspoken and rebellious. In the end, I got to really love the kitchen. Ang saya-saya, ang gulo-gulo.”

Growing up in a family exposed to various gatherings, the senator credits her mother Imelda as the one who really taught them "the joy of cooking and eating."

“My mother is very, very adventurous,” Marcos asserted. “There’s very little she won’t try. Like a good bisdak, she will eat anything at least once. My dad is not like that at all. But he gave us a real appreciation of healthy eating. Long before it became a fad, my father was eating soy bean, wheat germ and cutting out red meat from his meals..”

Marcos is releasing a cookbook “PinakBest,” which she wrote with notes from chef Reggie Aspiras.

The idea of coming out with a cookbook started when Aspiras celebrated her birthday.

Their bond goes a long way back when Aspiras’ father, Jose Aspiras, served as the first Minister of Tourism under the administration of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.

“This book is maybe a glimpse of my life through food. It shows how matakaw we all were, but at the same time how it brought my extremely public, highly busy family altogether. At the end of the day, food is family. Food is love and food is abundance,” Marcos said.

The book contains over 90 recipes, with detailed, step-by-step procedure on creating some of Marcos’ family’s favorite dishes. Among the recipes are Filipino favorites like okoy, dinendeng, and ginataang kinilaw.

“Favorite ng tatay ko dinendeng,” Marcos said. “As a matter of fact, when it’s his birthday in September, there is always a dinendeng cook-off, that is becoming more and more weird and bizarre.

“He didn’t like putting bagoong in dinendeng. He loves to put tukmem or small clams. ‘Yun ang pang-alat niya, parang clam juice. Top 1 sa kanya ‘yun. Favorite niya kasi.

Aspiras said “PinakBest” took over a decade in the making.

“Senator Imee had long wanted to showcase the dishes we grew up with that our fathers love. I grew up in a house full of people and with an abundance of food," she said.

“It was the excitement of our bustling kitchen in La Union in our hometown of Agoo, that made me want to cook.”

Aspiras vouched for Marcos’ cooking prowess. “Among her many hats, a toque also becomes her,” she said. “It’s such a privilege to do a book with the senator. The book is very, very personal. It’s an expression of the love of food by the family. It’s not pretentious.”

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