Pinatisang manok 2 (chicken soup with fish sauce)
Now, how does the broth acquire that golden color? Two things. One is the patis. But unless you drown your broth with patis which will make your soup dish inedible, the broth wll still look a little pale even after adding patis. So, what’s the secret? The secret is unpeeled onions. Not only are whole onions great for flavoring your broth; the golden color of the skin of white onions will help the broth to acquire a deep golden color.
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Salmon head and chayote tops soup
Unlike my fried chicken and cabbage fried rice, this soup dish was something I planned and prepared for. Well, more like a five-minute planning, actually. I saw the salmon heads in the supermarket and couldn’t resist the thought of having fish head soup for dinner. Then, there were the chayote tops that just looked so enticingly fresh. The picture inside my head of a simple soup spiced with lots of ginger was just too irresistible. So, I gave in…
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Adobong sitaw 2
I have an older recipe for adobong sitaw where I used small cubes of pork belly. This time, I used ground lean pork.
Is there much difference? Well, adobo is basically a fatty dish. It just doesn’t taste right unless there is some fat in the meat and the sauce. So, using ground lean pork does make a difference. I suppose it’s a matter of what is right for you…
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Chicken, gizzards and upo (bottle gourd) soup
Together with the baked scallops, this chicken, gizzards and upo (bottle gourd) soup were the last things I cooked before I finally acknowledged that I was sick and had to stay in bed. I started feeling strange on Saturday but not bad enough to change my usual routine. Despite the chills on Saturday evening (I thought the aircon’s temperature was just too cold), I managed to cook lunch on Sunday. Then, on Sunday evening, I knew I was really sick and dinner consisted mostly of leftovers and make-your-own sandwiches.
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Lasang Pinoy 14 (A la Espanyola): My father’s sarciado
About my father’s sarciado… of course, I had enjoyed this dish countless of times when I was growing up. But the day my husband ate my father’s sarciado, it became his standard for sarciado. I had just given birth to our firstborn, Sam, and on a visit, my father cooked his sarciado and a clam soup with malunggay. My husband couldn’t stop talking about the sarciado for days.
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Ube-macapuno dessert
After being duped by fake macapuno sold in supermarkets, my husband came home a few days ago with the real thing–authentic macapuno balls. Then, today, one of his co-workers arrived from a business trip in Baguio with a jar of Tamtanco’s ube halaya (purple yam jam). I don’t know what got into me but I suddenly thought of an ube “nest” with macapuno balls for “eggs”.
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Pancit miki (habhab)
Made with pancit miki from Lucban, Quezon, the noodles are the kind used for making pancit habhab, a meat-seafood-vegetable noodle dish served on banana leaves and eaten without spoon nor fork. The banana leaf is rolled loosely, allowing the pancit to come out on one end where it is eaten directly. Interesting thing, really, and I would have prepared it that way except that my kids might find it too inconvenient. Not exactly something to push to them after a gruelling day in school. So, although cooked much like pancit habhab, I served this noodle dish in the usual fashion.
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Tokwa’t baboy as a stew
The taste isn’t much different from the traditional tokwa’t baboy since the ingredients are practically the same. It is the texture that makes this dish unique. The thickened sauce, sticky from the broth in which the pork face was simmered, is just perfect for pouring over hot rice. I made three deviations from my father’s recipe though. 1) I omitted the salted yellow beans which my kids are not so fond of; 2) I browned the pork ears and nguso in the oven after simmering them to make them chewy rather than mushy; and, for that added color and zing, 3) I sprinkled chopped wansuy (cilantro) over the cooked dish just before serving.
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