Food articles posted in Oct 2008

Herb-infused olive oil

Herb-infused olive oil is great for cooking and for salads but, aside from the cost, when you buy the commercial kind, you’re stuck with flavors that the manufacturers consider popular and, ergo, easy to sell. But did you know that it’s cheaper to make herb-infused olive oil at home? Not only do you cut on cost, you can also get as creative as you wish, combining herbs and spices that suit your taste more.

How to wrap lumpia (spring rolls)

You might think it’s just wrapping and folding but there are a few tricks you might want to learn to make fantastic fried lumpia (spring rolls).

First, you need to seal in the filling so that the juices and flavors don’t drip into the cooking oil. Second, if the filling consists of raw ingredients (especially raw meat), you can’t put in too much filling because the cooking time is short — just long enough to brown the wrapper — and a thick filling will not get cooked through…

The how-to-cook series

As much as possible, I take photos of every step of the cooking to make the blog entries more instructional. Well, okay, that’s the noble way of explaining it. Perhaps, the more glaring truth is that I’m just camera obsessed. Anyway, visual guides are always good in food writing. Even with the disastrous cooked dishes, I have a myriad of step-by-step photos that illustrate various stages of cooking — chopping onions the painless way, mincing garlic without the cloves flying all over the kitchen, the stages in beating egg whites, cutting the kernels off a cob of fresh corn… You name it, I probably have a photo for it.

If you want your chilis mildly hot instead of very hot

So what do we do when we want all those reds and greens in our dishes but not the corresponding spiciness? A trick I learned from watching TV — scrape off the seeds. An invaluable tip from Nigella Lawson. Slit the pepper lengthwise and scrape off the seeds with a knife or a teaspoon. Then proceed to cut the peppers to the desired coarseness of fineness. A mezzaluna works best but a nicely curved knife will do the trick too.

Pork and cabbage soup

Despite the convenience, I am not a fan of canned broth. I like broth cubes even less. I make my own broth from scrap bones and what I don’t need for whatever soup I am making, I strain, cool and keep in the freezer.

When you keep a substantial stock of meat broth in the freezer, making a delicious soup is as easy as 1-2-3. No kidding. It’s practically just cutting the meat and vegetables and throwing everything into the pot. Fast too. If you cut everything into small pieces, your soup is ready in 15 minutes or less.

Baked macaroni for a Halloween party

Every year, when I celebrate my birthday, it’s like Christmas is just around the corner… There’s my birthday (I had my party on October 18), then Halloween, then my brother’s birthday… Then, it’s December and our wedding anniversary and, soon after that, it’s Christmas.

That means a lot of party cooking and, ergo, a lot of recipes that are good ideas for Christmas and the New Year. So I started updating the Noche Buena blog.

Chili garlic prawns

Prawns are pricey but most people don’t mind spending extra during the holidays. Here’s an easy prawn recipe that will earn praises for the cook.

For this chili garlic prawns recipe, I used black tiger prawns each weighing about 125 grams. The proportions of ingredients given below are for 500 grams of prawns.

Blueberries and cream

In her TV show Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson made a similar dessert using strawberries, cream and crumbled meringue. My version has blueberries, cream and crumbled broas (lady fingers). The great thing about this dessert is the short preparation time. And by substituting blueberries for strawberries, there is no trimming and cutting involved.

Another great thing about this dessert is that it keeps well in the fridge overnight. Except for the topping, everything can be prepared a day ahead.

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House On A Hill

Pinoy food

• Kilawing gindara
• Pancit bihon (rice sticks with chicken and vegetables)
• Guinataang paco
• Biko (sticky rice cake)
• Fish and malunggay soup
• Spicy, herb-y adobong sitaw
• A soup called bachoy
• Adobong kangkong
• Chicken tinola and liver sauce
• Chicken soup a la picadillo

Experimental

• Mango Muffins
• Chicken and mushrooms burger
• Beef brisket swimming in gravy
• Ox tongue with gravy
• No waste chicken and rice meal
• Sardines frittata in tortilla
• Talakitok belly and corn chowder
• Pork Aloha
• Nilasing na baboy (drunken pork)
• Junk Food Spaghetti