Pepe Rodríguez: With my family I look for minutes and make every minute something unique
It is as friendly and simple as it seems on TV. Pepe Rodríguez, one of the three members of the Masterchef jury, receives us in the same El Bohío restaurant that his grandparents founded, he kept his mother, Teresita, and now they take care of him and his brother. Fatigue does not erase the smile. Here is Pepe, the one from Illescas. A friend of Torrijos tells us that he has come to have coffee with him. It has a secret: work and put love to everything. At home, the dish has gone round: a fantastic woman and three children who give her life.
In your house who cooks?
For the sake of the family, I cook (laughs). She rather does subsistence cooking. My wife works, she has a company with 29 people. It has enough. In addition, we have three children, he takes care of them 90 percent of the time because I am not, which has much merit.
From Sunday to Tuesday night, I do not work, if I am at home, I cook. I love cooking for them. And they are delighted that I cook: "Dad, what are you doing? What have you brought back?" I do it with pleasure.
In the kitchen does "family" become?
Yes, a lot of family is made in the kitchen and maybe that habit has been lost a bit. Before, while they bit, they cut, they cooked, the grandmother and the mother took care of all the children who were there "half-ordered". That custom has been lost by many factors. However, I will tell you that thanks to a television program like Masterchef, it is not that everyone cooks and this is an orchard, but there are many people who recover that family life in the kitchen. So we can see how good a television format has in which brushstrokes are given to the kitchen, to the effort, to the union. And, above all, a program that is familiar.
Do we have to lose the fear that children enjoy cooking?
The problem is of the elderly, not the little ones. If you teach a child how to do anything, he has no problem. They are going to be cut, but nothing happens. When they go by bike they fall and nothing happens, they also ski and ride a motorcycle. I teach my children to be careful and that's it.
You have managed your fame very well but you live in a small town where everyone knows each other. How have you helped your children manage their father's fame?
I try to normalize it. His father is not extraordinary. He is a person who works hard and who is very lucky. I teach my children that this is temporary. We're up and we'll slide down a slide until they're the one saying, "This guy's face sounds to me, who was he?" My son came out in one of the programs and what I liked most about him is that I have not seen him or a boast. It moved me.
María Solano Altaba
Click here and continue reading the full interview in our magazine.
