Asian cooking

• Tofu, spinach and bean sprouts stir fry
• Sandalwood in Vietnamese Pho
• Beef, ginger and pineapple stew
• Cabbage rolls soup
• Wonton soup
• Mussels and straw mushrooms in oyster sauce
• Tofu and baby corn stir fry
• Chicken satay
• 20-minute pancit miki
• Miso soup

How to cook

• Fried tokwa (firm tofu)
• Video: gutting and cleaning fresh fish
• Pork siomai (steamed dumplings), pearl balls and lumpiang shanghai (fried spring rolls)
• Stages in beating egg whites
• A more flavorful pancit canton (chow mein)
• Reheating fried spring rolls
• How to wrap lumpia (spring rolls)
• 1 kilo of fish equals soup and spring rolls
• The how-to-cook series
• Stir frying basics

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Fresh tropical fruits salad

Ditch the canned fruit cocktail with the rubbery content that is 90% chewy papaya. Fresh fruits tossed in a mixture of cream and sweetened condensed milk may entail more work but the result is a far, far cry from miniscule fruit pieces swimming in white mass.

There are no hard and fast rules as to what fruits can go into the salad. My family’s preferences include mangoes, melon, bananas, seedless grapes and apples. Papaya and pineapple are good choices too. You can even add buko to your fruit salad.

I recommend chilling the fruits (in the fridge, not in the freezer), as well as the cream and sweetened condensed milk, before preparing the salad.

Some fruit like bananas and apples discolor fast. If you don’t intend to assemble your fruit salad immediately, you may want to toss your sliced bananas and apples with a little lemon or kalamansi juice to retard the discoloration process. Aside from that, there’s not much to making a fresh fruits salad. Just remove all inedible portions of the fruits and cut into more or less the same sizes.

Then pour in your dressing and toss. Most people prefer a 1:1 ratio of cream and sweetened condensed milk but my taste buds say that’s too sweet. I prefer a 1:2 ratio — one part sweetened condensed milk to two parts cream. Just stir them together, pour on the fruits and toss. How much depends on the amount of fruit you have prepared. As a guide, for four mangoes, half a melon, four bananas, one apple and a cup and a half of grapes, I used one cup of cream and half a cup of sweetened condensed milk.

Once the salad has been assembled, place in a covered container and keep in the fridge until needed.

You might want to try these too!

1. Melon and coconut milkshake
2. Mango cream pie
3. Chicken embutido