Kangkong (water or swamp spinach) in oyster sauce
When we had lunch at Trellis in Market! Market! two weekends ago, one of the dishes we ordered was kangkong (water or swamp spinach) in oyster sauce. It was alright except that the tough ends of the stalks had not been cut off. When I did my version of the dish a few days ago, [...]
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Soba noodles, chicken and veggies
We had this for lunch a few days ago. Japanese soba noodles with stir fried boneless chicken breast meat, broccoli and cauliflower. Soba noodles are made from buckwheat flour (soba-ko) but the variety I used is made from a mixture of buckwheat flour and mountain potato flour. At least, that was what the package said. [...]
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Taba ng talangka (preserved crab fat)
When I was interviewed by MenÕs Health magazine recently, I was asked what I considered to be the most unhealthy Filipino food. I forgot what should have been at the top of my list–taba ng talangka. Taba is fat; talangka is a small crab. These crabs, two inches wide (excluding the feet) on the average, [...]
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Oven-grilled chicken with corn sauce
I used to cook this dish by first frying the chicken pieces before stirring it into the sauce. Well, that was then. This is now. I cooked the same dish for tonight’s dinner by grilling the chicken in the convection oven. I prepared the buttered corn kernels and the sauce separately. In short, there were [...]
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Chicken, squash and eggplant stir fry
One chicken breast to feed a family of four… impossible? Not. We weren’t able to go to the market and the supermarket over the weekend and I was kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for dinner ideas on Sunday evening. We were out the whole day and I needed to fix something quick. [...]
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Pickled goodies
Pickling has gone a long way since my grandmotherÕs time. Traditionally, atsara refers to pickled unripe papaya (third jar from the left in the photo). Today, thereÕs pickled ampalaya (bitter gourd), pickled ubod (heart of palm) and burong mustasa (mustard leaves)–fourth, fifth and sixth jars in the photo. As though that’s not enough pickled goods [...]
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Chicken, peas and mushrooms in sour cream
My intention was to cook the chicken a la stroganoff. The result far exceeded my expectations. This dish is now among my family’s favorites.
So, what did I do with the chicken? I chopped it into serving size pieces, seasoned the pieces with salt and pepper, lightly browned them in lots of butter and chopped [...]
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Piaya
Piaya is a flat unleavened bread filled with mozcovado (raw) sugar. A product of the Negros provinces, sugar capital of the Philippines, it is now also produced by other regions in the Visayas. The piaya in the photo are from the province of Cebu.
What’s the texture like? The bread is flaky, just like the Chinese [...]
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