Pinakbet without bagoong
The title of the entry sounds sacrilegious, I know. Pinakbet without bagoong. Well, tough. I am allergic to bagoong (shrimp paste) and even its fish version. In fact, there are certains brands of patis (fish sauce) that do not agree with me as well. Ironically, I love the Ilocano classic dish called pinakbet–not for the bagoong-flavored sauce but for the wonderful mixture of vegetables. And I always felt a little deprived when, growing up, everyone in the family could enjoy a hearty meal of pinakbet except me.
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Lamb adobo
There was a time when my family went lamb-crazy. We grilled lamb chops almost every two weeks and when we got bored with the chops, I learned to cook a whole leg of lamb and even served it once like ham. There came a point when my husband suddenly couldn’t stand the peculiar odor of lamb. And it happened when I still had a few trays of lamb chops and shanks in the freezer. I figured the best way to remove, or at least hide, the odor would be to cook the lamb as stews. The already strong-smelling adobo (some say pungent though I disagree) would be a good choice. But I still decided to take extra measures to remove as much of the odor of lamb as I could.
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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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Pineapple chicken
This isn’t my recipe. I don’t even know where the recipe came from exactly. This was a school project of my daughter. The recipe was given to them in school and the project was to create meals and sell them in school as part of an entrepreneur skills training. According to my daughter, she was not required to buy the ingredients herself (her dad went to the supermarket) and neither was she expected to do the cooking (which I did). Her role was to sell the packed lunches. And she sold all.
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Tokwa’t isda sa gata (fish and tofu in coconut milk)
There was this doctor on the news a few days ago saying that there has been no sufficient study to prove the health benefits of virgin coconut oil. Well, that’s not the same as saying the benefits are illusory. They might be illusory. A lot of people are suckers for miracle cures. But it is quite possible that doctors are resisting because the fad is bad for the medical and pharmaceutical business.
My position is this: Filipinos along with the natives of dozens of other tropical countries have been coconut consumers for centuries, and high blood pressure and other related ailments have not been a real problem until the fast food culture…
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Lasang Pinoy 12 (fusion cooking ): sauteed mongo sprouts and asparagus with oyster sauce
So, we take the humble togue guisado and transform it. But this dish is really more than just about fusion cooking. This is about pacifying two bickering adolescents. My 13-year-old daughter Sam wanted an asparagus dish for dinner last Sunday while 12-year-old Alex wanted togue (mongo or mung bean sprouts). In fact, they had been arguing since the night before when we were in the supermarket and choosing what vegetables we would cook for the next couple of days. So I combined the vegetables they wanted to eat. Sam even had an extra plate of asparagus all to herself.
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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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Ground beef and quail eggs
I got the idea for this dish from a popular ulam (viand) served in Filipino carinderias (roadside eateries). It is basically menudo except that it is made with ground meat. In carinderias, the dish is usually garnished with hard-boiled chicken eggs which serve as an inexpensive extender.
The size of the quail eggs seemed to me to be more appropriate for gound meat…
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