'Daddy in the kitchen' archive

Strawberry pancake syrup

Due to a strange twist of fate, I’m on cooking vacation from now until the New Year. My husband, Speedy, will be doing ALL of the cooking although I am not sure if that includes the dishes for the New Year’s Eve family reunion. Of course, it’s going to be a man-in-the-kitchen kind of menu, pork chops and rib-eye steaks are on the list, but the fact that he’s serving them with side dishes means he will definitely have to do more than simply grill the meat. But that’s for later today. Let’s start with what we had for breakfast. Speedy’s version of Christmas Eve breakfast? Pancakes with strawberry syrup. Not store bought pancake syrup but home made using fresh strawberries.

Sunday morning at the Market at the Hills

Along Temple Drive in Quezon City is a weekend market called Market at the Hills. It opens at 7.00 a.m. and closes at 4.00 p.m. We were there a little after 7 yesterday, ahead of the crowds so we were able to enjoy breakfast and leisurely shopping…

Because Sunday is Dad’s turn to cook day, when my husband Speedy saw the cured meats and ready-to-eat food items for sale, he bought several items to make his Sunday chore easier…

Speedy’s winter melon soup

If the term winter melon does not sound familiar, it is none other than “kundol” — yes, the sugar-coated candied delicacy. Contrary to popular belief, “kundol” is not a fruit but a vegetable. The texture is similar to “upo”, or bottle grourd, but more watery and more translucent.

I used one winter melon for a soup dish several days ago and reserved the last one because my husband said he had a very good recipe for it.

Carbonara, the (almost) traditional way

Personally, I have always preferred to cook carbonara the bastardized way. It’s habit. When the kids were very young, I wasn’t sure how safe raw eggs would be for them so I never used raw eggs. Then, the kids got used to the carbonara with cream and that was that. But a few nights ago, my husband and I were watching TV and he saw Nigella Lawson cooking carbonara the traditional way. Realizing how easy it was, he decided that carbonara was what we’d have for dinner on Sunday night.

Speedy’s burritos

Burritos — a Mexican food that consists of flour tortilla wrapped around a filling that can include beans, beef, vegetables or all of them. When we go to Taco Bell, we often choose the one with ground beef and potato filling. We’ve tried others (the pork barbecue is… well, just skip it) and we’ve always gone back to the one true and tested burrito that have never failed us. I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of us tried to reproduce it at home. My husband, Speedy, beat me to it.

If you want more photos of the burrito preparation, click here. Otherwise, read on for the recipe.

Crouching tiger, hidden salmon

If only I had a more reliable broadband service provider, I would have been posting recipes one after the other for the past so many days. Unfortunately, there is only PLDT where I live and its service leaves much to be desired. If you want to read about my misfortune, click here, hereand here. Otherwise, just read on and view the recipe for the dish that my husband cooked for lunch on Mother’s Day.

The recipe is from Tucker Shaw’s Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens: Killer Recipes for Guys and it features my favorite fish in the world — salmon. If you’re wondering about the strange title of this entry, I didn’t invent it. It was the name that Shaw gave this recipe because he “invented” it hoping that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would win in the Oscars as, in fact, it did.

Kani salad

For dinner last night, I fried a 1.32-kilogram pompano, made a pot of miso soup while my husband prepared a bowl of Japanese kani salad.

What is kani salad? It is a mixture of cucumber, carrot, crab sticks and sweet ripe mango. Most recipes say just toss them with Japanese mayo but there was something missing. You really want to add a drizzle of sesame seed oil to give kani salad that unique Oriental flavor.

Tequila Pork Loin

Yesterday, Sunday, like every Sunday, was my husband’s turn to cook. After much heckling, he finally decided we deserved more than fried Spam and eggs. He finally decided too that it was about time he tried a recipe from a cookbook that I bought for him last year. He had the book in the car for the past week so that at any time he could sneak in a trip to the supermarket, he could check the ingredients he would need.

Tequila Pork Loin is from Tucker Shaw’s Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens: Killer Recipes for Guys.

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