Garlic, basil and onion leaves sinangag

It is grilled pork liempo (belly) and a new concoction for sinangag (fried rice). There are two reasons why we had them for lunch today.

First, Pinoyblog had it’s Christmas party at Cabalen restaurant last night. Cabalen serves Filipino dishes. More specifically, it specializes in Campampangan (a regional) cuisine. I’ve eaten in the various Cabalen branches before and found the buffet rather mediocre. Cheaper than other restaurant buffets so perhaps that should partly explain the choice of entrees. But last night was a real bummer. The food was just terrible. Not only had the number of dishes been drastically reduced; the quality has deteriorated a gazillion times.

There was something called onion rings which looked like reheated calamares (deep-fried squid rings). The onion rings were rubbery, the onion slices inside were super dry but the batter was dripping on oil which, naturally, means they were not freshly cooked. In fact, they seemed to have been cooked two days ago then reheated over and over. The lumpiang bangus appeared and tasted reheated as well.

I didn’t bother with the kare-kare. The dinuguan was the only dish I liked although the sauce was much too thin and pale for my preference. The crispy kangkong was alright.

To cut a long rant short, I was hoping for a good Filipino buffet dinner and was sadly disappointed. I decided we would have grilled liempo for lunch today para hindi naman bitin. I did the marinating; my husband did the charcoal grilling. Of course, the kids did most of the eating.

The new sinangag recipe was inspired by something from a book by an outrageous chef whom I am admiring more and more each time I turn a page. I am referring to Anthony Bourdain and his Kitchen Confidential where I came across some very interesting descriptions of combinations of basic herbs and spices. I so believe him when he wrote that cooking good food is a craft–a skill. And no amount of decorating can make a dish better than one that may use only a few–but fresh–and well-chosen ingredients.

In the mood for more food?

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