Fish & seafood

• Fish fillets with pepper and thyme
• Fish fillets in white wine
• Steamed pompano with ginger sauce
• Mackerel frittata
• Baked river cobbler fillets
• Fried lapu-lapu with pineapple sauce
• No meat during Lent?
• Salmon salad with mango-lemon dressing
• Salmon and tomato soup
• Braised tilapia

Mighty meaty

• Pepper steak
• Speedy’s burritos
• Rolled pork loin stuffed with garlic, onion, basil and tomatoes
• Fresh herbs in my lamb curry
• Floyd’s Greek stew
• Low-fat, down-sized burgers
• Pork loin chops with cream cheese sauce
• Spaghetti with meatballs
• Pork pata (hock) with shiitake mushrooms and broccoli
• Pork and beans

Healthy veggies

• Fish fillets and togue (mung bean sprouts) stir fry
• Buttered pork and vegetables
• Pritong tilapia (fried St. Peter’s fish) and cheese-topped chili-cauliflower bake
• Roast pork loin and spicy kangkong
• The complete salad
• Cooking for Father’s Day? Here’s an idea.
• A side dish: buttered corn and carrots
• Swiss rosti (a.k.a. fried potatoes)
• Smoked salmon, lettuce and kesong puti (white cheese) salad
• Floyd’s Greek stew

Hototay

Hototay is a Chinese soup dish but you’ll find it in the menu of most Filipino restaurants and eateries. Even the sidealk pares stall serves it. That is how much it has become a part of Filipino cuisine. Hototay is a meat-and-vegetable soup made with slivers of pork meat, pork liver, chicken gizzards, dumplings, mushrooms and vegetables in a clear broth garnished with raw eggs. Sounds exotic? It is. There are so many wonderful ingredients in this soup dish that it can be a complete and filling meal by itself.

Hototay has been one of my personal favorites since I was a child. When I was in the second grade and I needed retainers on my teeth (I really hated those things), every time that thing needed adjustments–which was every weekend–my father would cajole me with the promise of lunch at San Jacinto in Chinatown after a each visit with the dentist. The thought of steaming hot hototay and the crisp wrapper of lumpiang shanghai with its dunking sweet and sour sauce would always win. And my brother who didn’t need anything from the dentist would come along. Where my brother went, so went my mother. So, the dentist thing and the accompanying Chinese lunch was kind of a family weekend affair. Anyway…

Hototay is not a difficult dish to cook. It does entail a lot of preparation though. Since there are so many ingredients that go into it, the cutting, chopping, slicing and mincing do take some effort. The effort, I should say, is all worth the trouble once the dish is complete.

In the mood for more food?

• Dampa sa Libis
• Chicken soup for a rainy day
• Lo mein in less than 15 minutes
• Fish fillet fried rice
• Cucumber cooler
• Shopewise’s pandan-macapuno cake
• Food color
• Broccoli and potatoes frittata
• Fish fillet and vegetables in sour cream
• Japchae (jabchae, chapchae or chapchee), a Korean noodle dish