Pork and vegetables mami (noodle soup)
The girls are due home at around four o’clock this afternoon from a three-day community service field trip to the pawikan reserve in Morong, Bataan and I am whiling away the time productively — trying to, at least (what a slow and quiet day without the kids in the house) until Speedy and I have [...]
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Adobong kabute sa gata (mushrooms adobo in coconut cream)
It’s not the same as cooking pork or chicken adobo. Mushrooms are fatless and you can’t make them render fat no matter how long you cook them. You’ll only make them shrink if you cook them for too long. You don’t add soy sauce either–the mushrooms brown in oil fast and adding soy sauce will make the cooked dish far too dark to look attractive. Does that mean that this is something more complicated that meat adobo? Actually, no. This is easier and simpler.
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Steamed fish in sesame oil
A couple of years ago, I created a dish of steamed fish, garlic, ginger, parsley and olive oil. Earlier today, I decided to create something similar but with more oriental flavors. Instead of olive oil, I used sesame seed oil. In lieu of chopped parsley, I added onion leaves. The simplicity of the preparation, the freshness of the ingredients, the amazing aroma… this is down-to-earth cooking.
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Fried labahita (surgeonfish) with chili-pineapple sauce
Love sweet and sour fish but bored with its usual appearance and the combination of ingredients? Try combining chopped chili peppers with crushed pineapple, add some honey instead of sugar and lemon juice in lieu of vinegar. The honey will give the sauce a golden hue and the lemon juice will impart a pleasant and tangy aroma. Best of all, the old boring sweet and sour fish will take on an entirely new apprearance and a whole new gastronomic dimension. 
The combination of chili peppers and crushed pineapple in a sweet and sour sauce was something that had been playing in my mind for days. I knew that lemon juice in lieu of vinegar would create a wonderful aroma but I couldn’t quite figure out how to add a dash of color to the sauce without adding tomato paste…
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Lasang Pinoy 12: fusion cooking and my beef tapa sandwich
When I read from Ces’ food blog that it’s going to be fusion cooking for the 12th edition of Lasang Pinoy, I got overly excited. This is my passion–turning traditional, often boring, recipes into dishes that are more today. I started digging into my archives to find out which of my previously posted recipes would be worth including in this post. There are so many but I chose… three to represent three categories of Filipino dishes: rice, meat and desserts…
In addition to that, I present a wonderful new way to serve the classic beef tapa–as a sandwich.
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Turkey and potato salad
In the turkey lumpia entry, I mentioned that half of the turkey meat I was able to salvage went into a potato salad. This is it. Not only was I able to save the turkey meat, I was also able to finally use the fat-free Kraft mayonnaise that no one wanted to spread on sandwiches…
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“Fish tofu”
They weren’t tofu at all. They were fish balls shaped like tofu cubes. There was no taste of soya whatsoever. Fake tofu! No wonder the ingredients weren’t listed in the wrapping. It would have been a dead giveaway. Duh, food manufacturers really ought to list the ingredients. Otherwise, it’s cheating. Oh, the “fish tofu” is manufactured by Mindanao Food Corporation. The address in the packaging is Susano Heights, Novaliches, Quezon City. And I’m keeping the plastic wrapping as evidence. Cheats.
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Serving idea for store-bought siomai (pork dumplings)
… I am wary of frozen siomai. Eight times out of ten, they’re nothing but wrappers with a little filling that tastes like it’s made of 80% extenders. But I took my chances with a rather large tray of siomai at Rustan’s supermarket a few weeks back. They were okay. Not bad at all.
The kids wanted the siomai steamed and served a la dimsum. I wanted them with noodles, vegetables and broth…
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