Food articles posted in Aug 2007

Mini-custard pie with coconut cream

Egg tarts from Lord Stow’s bakery are rather pricey. But they’re addictive. And the nearest outlet is more than an hour’s drive from our house. I figured why not try to reproduce them at home. I wish I could make puff pastry from scratch but I can’t. I wish frozen puff pastry was available in [...]

How do you like your French fries?

It might interest you to know that French fries might not have originated in France but in that part of Europe that eventually became Belgium. There are newspaper accounts of Belgians selling fried potatoes at fairs during the 18th century. Of course, they weren’t known as French fries then. The “French” part came much later. During World War I, British or American soldiers tasted the fried potatoes and, because French was the language spoken in Belgium, called them French fries. You can read all about that in Wikipedia which provides great sources in the footnotes for further reading. I’m not into food history but the “French” part did interest me. I have to say that I experienced some sort of déjà vu when I thought about how American Indians came to be called as such after some ignorant explorers thought they had landed in India when, in fact, they reached another part of the world.

Gulaman, sago and Quickly pearl shakes (bubble milk tea)

Despite the girls’ addiction to pearl shakes, I never liked Orbitz nor Zagu. The artificial sweetener left an aftertaste that didn’t quite agree with my mouth. I wouldn’t develop a craving for pearl shakes until we discovered Quickly at the Tutuban Mall sometime during the late 1990s.

It was a hot and humid day and the girls wanted cold drinks. We couldn’t find an Orbitz or a Zagu stall but there was this stall with an unfamiliar name selling pearl shakes. We bought and we all got hooked. While Zagu and Orbitz offered the usual fruit flavors, Quickly offered more exotic blends. Mixing and matching was possible too. And if one got bored with pearl balls, nata de coco or pudding could be substituted.

Lunch at Iceberg

Have you ever been to Iceberg and not enjoyed halo-halo or any of their oversized and yummy desserts? A few weeks ago, my husband and his officemates had lunch at Iceberg (Banawe Mall of Asia) and he told me that the food was surprisingly good. He was especially impressed with the lechon kawali.

Last weekend, we were at the mall and looking for a not-too-crowded restaurant for a very late lunch. The girls wanted Japanese but we passed Iceberg and reached a compromise. If they agreed to have lunch at Iceberg, we could go Japanese for dinner.

Rattan fruit

…because they had been sitting in the fridge for almost a week, I was careful about how I was going to taste them. Strange things happen to fruits after several days even when stored in the fridge. And since it was going to be my first taste of the rattan fruit, I took the tiniest bite. If it had been my fingers rather than my teeth, it would be like pinching with the fingernails. The bite I took was that tiny but it was enough.

Ang asim, maryosep!

The return to Sbarro

I have a confession to make. I absolutely love pizza. And one of my biggest frustrations is my inability to make good-quality pizza at home. It’s not the lack of ingredients. I know where to buy everything — good mozzarella, those spicy Italian sausages, herbs and spices… No, the problem is not the topping. It’s the crust. I still can’t make good pizza crust — the kind that is almost crisp outside but soft inside. I can’t hand-toss dough if my life depended on it. And because I never liked frozen pizza crust (they taste too much like bad biscuit), we’d rather eat out to get good pizza.

Bear with me… the cookbook has passed dream stage

It’s been rather hard to pull myself together to open this blog after what happened last Friday. You’ll have to read it in my other blog. I suggest that you do so that you can better understand the rest of this entry.

Done? Okay…

My first reaction was to put Pinoy Cook on semi-retirement. Meaning, no updating to wrap up the work on the cookbook that I first mentioned more than a year ago. The writing part wasn’t so hard, taking better photos was harder. It didn’t help either that I couldn’t — still can’t — work fulltime on the book. I have a family — a hungry husband and kids, I have a twice weekly op-ed column, I write for a magazine, I teach “Internet and Law” to high school seniors and there’s also an IT Guild which is like a combination of IT and high school journalism. But the most trying part was writing the cookbook and keeping this blog up-to-date. It was like writing two cookbooks at the same time.

Barbecue, an exotic street food

In a country where over ninety per cent of the population live below the poverty line, it helps to be both frugal and creative when it comes to food. Nothing illustrates the frugality and creativity of the Filipino better than barbecue. When I was growing up in a not-too-crowded Metro Manila, barbecue meant charcoal-grilled marinated slices of pork or chicken breast, legs or thighs in bamboo skewers. If not home-cooked, they were mostly sold in restaurants that specialized in grilled food. Aristocrat, for instance, already an institution in the Philippine restaurant scene, has been consistently serving great pork and chicken barbecue for decades. I remember Jack’s Restaurant and Blue Spot Restaurant in Caloocan, both famous for their barbecue.

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Amateur baker

• Lemon squares
• Oatmeal, mango and cheese pie
• Corn muffins
• Blueberry and apple squares
• No bake chocolate-almonds-cream cheese cookie squares
• Mixed berries muffins
• Mango and cashew nut bars
• Choco butter cupcakes
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• Vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Oh, so sweet!

• Refrigerator cake
• Mango and jelly (jango) dessert
• Christmas jello
• Choco-mocha-cinnamon pudding
• Coffee jelly dessert
• Mango custard
• Green tea and rambutan dessert
• Chocolate-pinipig balls inspired by Magnolia’s pinipig crunch
• Mandarin Orange Royale
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