This is Chef A's chicharon aleta.  Very thinly sliced pork that is breaded and deep fried.  A favorite at gatherings but soon enough will have to come with a dose of Lipitor...  

I love strawberries.  The fresh kinds as I'm not into the various preserved versions.  I love them even more with chocolate and cream.  Pictured here with an almond brownie that R brought home from Davao and r who refused to get out of the frame.

Thanks to traveling family and friends, we keep a steady supply of our favorite food items.  Ya Kun Kaya from Singapore, Horlicks and Aik Cheong Teh Tarik from Malaysia, Vanilla Bean paste from Australia, Reese's Peanut Butter Chips from the US (safely stashed away in the fridge), etc.  However, local supermarkets already carry a wide range of international products so you don't have to go far to get good chorizo (that won't cost an arm and a leg like El Rey), seaweed, Japanese sauces, pasta, etc.  Eating out is a greater challenge now because we'll only pay for things that we can't or are too difficult to replicate in our kitchen.  That's why KFC will always have a place in our hearts.

I put a zester on my wishlist last year and received a great one from S.  When I mused about what I could bake with it, she immediately said orange cake!  Here's the one she adores from Bellini's.


We learned somewhere that it's called Torta di Arancia and R searched the internet for a recipe.  Only one was in English!  We tried it anyway (and finally took my cathedral pan out of storage) and were quite happy with the results.  We've always had a thing for orange-flavored desserts and this one did not disappoint in terms of flavor.  The cake was very similar to a pound cake so it was considerably heavier than Bellini's, which is more butter cake-like.


This version then (with some modifications) will now be referred to as A's orange cake, while the quest to approximate Bellini's continues!

The cupcakes I did a couple of months back left me with a lot of egg yolks.  I wasn't in the mood to make vanilla custard and since I was already in an experimenting phase, I figured I'd try something new again.  Leche flan.  I found a simple recipe in an old cookbook and Market Manila had very thorough posts about his own leche flan experiments that I had a fair idea of what to do.  I opted to use a bain marie in the oven that was still fired up from baking the cupcakes as I have always been intimidated by the pressure cooker.  Instead of the usual oval-shaped llanera, I took out the trusty Selecta can that my mom has always used for making leche flan. 


My flan dismounted out of the can and ended up in a bit of a heap.  The top had a nice caramel color and emitted a sweet orange scent.  The flan was soft but not mushy, something like a firm creme brulee.  I love orange-flavored desserts and I used enough juice for the flavor to be distinct.  Looks aside, I was quite happy with how my first attempt at leche flan came out.  All I have to do now is make it look better so r will eat it.  Right now, he say's he prefers Mita's because her flan it prettier.

 I was in Kuala Lumpur for work last week and decided to take a few days off for a side trip to Singapore on the way home.  P moved to Sing a few months ago and I was eager to see her and what her new home looked like.  The only other time I had ever been to Singapore was more than 10 years ago when I wasn't very adventurous with food yet.  So aside from visiting P, I was excited about eating my way through the weekend.

R and I took the last flight out of KL and settled into P's condo at around 9pm and were quite hungry by then.  So hungry that we forgot to take photos of an absolutely delicious dinner at Boon Tong Kee of steamed chicken, tofu in hotpot, imperial pork and chicken rice.  I'll be back there someday if only to take photos to properly document and share the experience (excuses, excuses).  

We did a little better the next day, remembering to take out the camera before completely polishing off the dimsum at Yum Cha in Chinatown.  P calls it a hole-in-the-wall but the nearly SG$20/person that it came out to didn't strike us as so.  In any case, we loved it  for its wide selection of delicious dimsum --- over 70 according to the website and a relief for me whose options are usually limited by a seafood allergy to chicken feet and spare ribs.  We had everything from the usual steamed spare ribs to mushroom dumplings (chopped mushrooms and vegetables wrapped in glutinous rice similar to a mochi) to siao long bao (siomai with soup inside).  R says that the siao long pao is actually a siopao (given the thicker wrapper than siomai) but is sized and shaped similar to siomai.  We learned from one of our lunchmates of Chinese descent that the proper way of eating it is putting it on a spoon, biting off a little off the top, then sipping the soup through the hole.  Oh, so that's how you DON'T burn your palate with the sudden rush of steaming broth in your mouth (that happens when you pop the whole thing in). You learn something new everyday...


Other dishes we savored were the Crystal Paper Chicken (wings baked in paper to preserve their moisture and prevent burning) and Mini Egg Tarts.   One of our Thai lunchmates was about to overlook the plain-looking egg tarts because we were already stuffed.  And was she glad for the sudden change of heart!  These egg tarts had a very smooth filing and a wonderfully flaky crust.  A great end to a fantastic meal.  


Thank you, P, for sharing the sumptuous meal with us to celebrate your birthday.

Or I should say, Chendol for C.  My family likes to travel and eat.  Sometimes, we travel TO eat.  And whenever we can't travel together, we eat for each other.  Vicarious satisfaction if you will.  So on this brief trip to Kuala Lumpur that R and I took, C asked us to have Chendol for her.  Chendol is a Malaysian dessert made with sweetened red beans, black gelatin, syrup, coconut milk, and some gooey, sticky green worms (or at least, what we call worms) made of glutinous rice.  These are served with some finely shaved ice, similar to our native halo-halo.  I am not fond of beans but I had a request to fulfill.  And I am glad I did!  Chendol is apparently an excellent dessert!  The red beans did not have the grainy-ness that I usually associate with beans and the coconut milk melting with the ice gave it a very cool and refreshing flavor.  The slight chewiness of the black gelatin and green "worms" give the dish a nice texture that help you savor the flavors longer.

I've always been intimidated by egg whites so light cakes were never my thing.  The whole business of having to fold in egg whites to make a chiffon or "cooking" them with hot sugar syrup to make icing always made me turn to the next page on a cookbook.  R says that we should open a store called Ugly Desserts because we make some really great tasting treats but they're usually not very pretty.  Decent-looking enough but nothing that'll ever hold a candle to the likes of Sonja's or Bizu.  But this whole cupcake craze has made me curious about frosting.  The only problem was, how could I get around egg whites?

I searched the internet and found a video on youtube that demonstrated how to make frosting with no egg whites.  Great!  Next problem, the cupcake recipe it came with had the dreaded whites.  Since I promised myself at the start of the year that I'd try to make at least one new thing each month, I might as well go ahead with this one.   And the first attempt was a smashing success!


Separating the eggs was expectedly the trickiest part.  But I followed the recipe to the letter and out came wonderfully moist cupcakes bursting with fresh orange flavor.  My antiquated oven was working perfectly that afternoon that each batch came out cooked exactly to the same doneness.  The recipe says it's for 12 cupcakes but I yielded 30!  Maybe the cups I used were smaller than intended.  The latter ones got pretty dense either because the air in the batter had already deflated while waiting for their turn in the oven or because the additional mixing I did ruined them.  In any case, I had way more than 12 good ones.  Now for the icing.

I again followed the recipe closely, albeit using just half because it looked like it would yield too much as well.  I found it too buttery so I adjusted by adding more confectioner's sugar.  I eventually arrived at something that was pretty close to Sonja's in terms of texture and basic flavor.  I didn't feel the need to flavor it because I didn't want it to compete with the orange flavor of the cupcakes.  Next up was color.  I don't know if it's the kind that I used or the strong yellow color from the butter but the closest I could get to the orange that I was aiming for was a rather melon-like hue.  I eventually stopped trying to add more because I didn't want to use too much food color and settle for a light orange shade.  Now the fun part:  frosting the cupcakes!

I bought a cheap icing bag set several years ago just to play with and now was the perfect opportunity to finally open it.  Wilton tips they're not so I had just one decent tip available for this purpose.  They worked well enough that I can at least say I can decorate something if I really had to.  And then inspiration struck.  I have always had a thing for orange-flavored chocolate so why not have a chocolate frosting for my orange cupcakes?  I dug through the fridge for baking chips (which we usually keep a steady supply of) and some leftover heavy cream.  Stuck them momentarily into the microwave, stirred until smooth, and voila!  Chocolate frosting!  This combination, I swooned over!


And so my first attempt at cupcakes were not half bad.  Not the prettiest, but certainly delicious.  My sugar-averse mom finish one (sans the icing) and her sister (who had the orange-frosted one because she can't have chocolate) even asked for the recipe.  And r is happy that he can now have cuppy cakes at home.  I gave myself a good pat on the back this one.

 I developed an allergy to most seafood in my teen years and for a long time would eat only fish.  But somehow a few years ago, I discovered I could safely eat mollusks (which I loosely define as seafood without any appendages).  Since then, I'd take advantage whenever I could get a hold of good oysters or mussels.  Clams, I find, do not have as interesting a flavor and are more malansa.

One of my favorite places for oysters is New Orleans Restaurant in Bonifacio High Street.  The ones I like most are the Rockefeller and Amatriciana.  Their Rockefeller is more substantial than others I've tried because you get actual spinach leaves rather than just strips of it.  Some may argue that it buries the oysters but I like it that way.  Makes me feel like it's healthier.  And the melted cheese on top just makes me swoon every time!


The Amatriciana has a bacon and tomato sauce similar to its pasta inspiration.  What makes this dish more special is the potato hair on top of it.  It's a pleasant and surprising departure from most cheese, garlic and cream-based oyster preparations.  Each order has 8 (or is it 10?) pieces.  They're great eaten with bread and that's what I order when I'm not in the mood for the ribs that New Orleans is also known for.   

 I received a text message from Tito C inviting R and me to dinner sometime last November.  It was a hectic week and we would have preferred to take a raincheck but he was insistent.  He said he had something interesting to show us.  Tito C is a successful businessman who is always looking out for new ventures and was generous with his resources.  It sounded like he was going to pitch something to us so we figured we might as well check it out.  And interesting it was.  


Tito C had just returned from Malaysia and was eager to show us what he found:  Boro Coconut Cookies.  My first thought was, uh oh, coconut.  I'm not exactly a fan but I had to hear him out.  He had apparently met the owner who was looking to expand distribution to other Asian countries such as the Philippines.  Knowing that R and I are into food and that we know a bit about distribution, he thought of offering the opportunity to us.  Naturally he had samples for us to try.  Very tentatively, we opened a pack and were thoroughly surprised with what we tasted!  Instead of what we expected to be buko-like hard biscuits, these turned out to be very creamy, melt-in your mouth cookies, with rather interesting flavor notes.  They come in variants of Original, Durian, Pandan and Coffee.  Durian?! you say?  My initial thought exactly.  I ain't a fan of that either.  But these cookies blew me away!  Think uraro/arrowroot cookies but with a lighter texture, not as dry, and with way more interesting flavor than just being sweet.

They did not taste very coconutty (at least to my usually niyog-averse palate).  The coconut flavor added an interesting dimension to the variants.  Instead of competing with or overpowering the featured flavor, it created just the right amount of sweetness that was not cloying.  We absolutely loved all the flavors, but Coffee and Pandan were the best.  The rather large bag of samples we were given was gone in a matter of days.  

We eventually had to turn down the opportunity to distribute this product.  But I am certainly looking forward to an upcoming trip to Malaysia to have these again.

 


This was the view of our refrigerator a few days ago, bursting with food both to give and received.  We're still trying to clear out as much of the stuff as we can by the weekend to make space for the first baking projects of the year:  cookie bars and a peanut butter-frosted chocolate cake for folks at work that I haven't given any gifts to.  After that, I embark on one of my goals for the year:  to cook (!) and/or bake one new dish each month.  There are some fitness goals as well but that's not the point of this blog...  Happy eating in 2009!

On most trips, I decide where to eat depending on the destination. This is probably the first time an entire trip was planned BECAUSE of where I wanted to eat. And this wasn’t your ordinary let’s-go-to-Tagaytay-for-lunch kind of deal. It required a plane ride. I caught Market Manila’s Lechon Eyeball invitation with about 5 slots left open and it took 2 minutes for R and I to decide we were going (we had to check our schedules first). And off to Cebu it was. We went expecting a good lechon experience and got so much more than we anticipated.

While there was an amazingly wide spread of food, the star of the show was pork. Let me count the ways:

1. Chicharon Carcar. Nicely puffed up skin, healthy portions of “laman” (uh, that didn’t sound right), and no trace of rancidness indicating this was a fresh batch. I thought the ones I’d get in the Taboan market were already good ones. Market Man’s beat them by a mile.


2. Lechon Sisig. I have a thing for sizzling plates and seeing these cooked on giant grill plates just heightened the anticipation. Consistent with the lunch’s lechon theme, this batch of sisig was made of, guess what, lechon meat!


3. Lechon. The main event. Such beautifully roasted pigs. I go for the skin and ribs when eating lechon and these did not disappoint. The skin was wonderfully crisp and the meat on the bones were moist and flavorful. Lip-smacking good leaving traces of oil around the mouth as evidence of the indulgence.


4. Lechon Paksiw. You’d expect to find paskiw a day AFTER an event graced by the presence of lechon.  This one had them side by side! On most days, I actually enjoy the paksiw more than the lechon but that wasn’t the point of this meal. I had my fill just the same. Always hits the spot on some hot rice.


5. Torta. Just when you thought heading for the dessert table would free you from the pork, think again! These traditional tortas just happened to be made of pork fat. According to our Visayan companions, the torta originated in Carcar, the same hometown of our favorite chicharon. It’s apparently a by-product of chicharon since the chicharon makers had nothing better to do with the excess oil.


Read more about this great food event at
http://www.marketmanila.com/archives/three-little-piggies.

Thank you, MM, for a most memorable day of great food, new friends, and a beautiful view of Cebu City.

I've been spending Sunday afternoons in the kitchen lately, usually to bake as a warm-up of sorts because  I'm gearing up to make cookies for Christmas presents.  Then on some days, I try something new to assemble (as I've said, I don't cook).   Among my latest experiments:  pizza.  It's a good way to consume leftover ingredients in the fridge and a good snack alternative for r.  This past Sunday, the flavor of choice was Chorizo.

I don't have the patience to make my own dough so I use store-bought pizza crust.  It ain't restaurant quality but it serves its purpose.  In the freezer, I found some excess spaghetti sauce that R made from scratch (he's the one who cooks), mozzarella and parmigiano-reggiano cheeses, and Spanish chorizo.  When homemade sauce isn't available, I like using canned stewed tomatoes.  They're far more flavorful than prepared pizza sauces which tend to be the sweet Pinoy kind.  Mozzarella and parmesan cheese make a good mix because you get the stringy effect with the former and the saltiness of the latter.  I used less than one chorizo for this pizza (about 9").  Thinly sliced, it goes a pretty long way.  Just make sure to skim the oil off its surface so you don't get those orange pools of oil on the pizza.  One other days, I've used whatever cold cuts were available in the fridge with some sliced canned mushrooms. 

Next time, anchovies.

 There are two things I've been hemming and hawing about for several months now:  making ice cream and playing golf.  Inspired by Franco's (of the TableforThreePlease trio) success with ice cream, I often wondered if I could do the same to add to my growing repertoire of homemade desserts.  My biggest stumbling block, however, was that I didn't have an ice cream maker.  My kitchen counter's already crowded with other machines that I didn't know if I'd be committed enough to ice cream to invest in another one.  But they say that if you picture something in your mind often enough, the universe will conspire to make it happen.  And so it did to make my homemade ice cream a reality.


My teammate, Bubot, has had an unused Cuisinart ice cream maker sitting in a cabinet for about two years now.   When she heard about my predicament, she generously offered me to use it with the condition of bringing our team some ice cream if I was successful.  The next challenge was finding a good recipe.  After poring through several cookbooks, I settled on one by Marcel Desaulniers.  It seemed simple enough and I've had great success with a few of his recipes to be confident with the outcome (if I did it right).  It was simple as far as the ingredients were concerned but the operational part turned out to be more complicated than I expected.  It was likely due to my unfamiliarity with the whole business of making ice cream but at several points in the process, I was grumbling to Roy that maybe all the trouble wouldn't be worth the satisfaction of finally doing this.  As if that wasn't frustrating enough, we had to wait until the next day to have the final product because we didn't freeze the machine's freezing bowl ahead of time.  Roy got up early the next morning to churn the custard but it wasn't finished by the time I left for work.  But his urgent call to my office by midmorning to tell me how it turned out was a sign of good things to come.  In his words, it was SO worth the effort.

Our first attempt at chocolate ice cream was a winner.   It was called a "Black Satin" ice cream and that was exactly what it turned out to be. It was smooth, much smoother than store-bought ice creams.  And because Desaulniers is a proclaimed chocoholic, it was overflowing with the deep, rich flavor of cocoa.  It's something you can't rush, really.  Every spoonful demands savoring, and thus requires that you take a slow pace eating it.  The fact that the ice cream melts fast just makes it all the more exciting.  

I'll try a few more recipes before giving Bubot her machine back and then I think I will make the leap to get my own.  I haven't touched a golf club in almost 10 years.  Since this project turned out well, maybe I'll muster the initiative to go back to golf next.

[Franco, many thanks for sharing your experiments with us.  We'll share some of ours soon enough.]

 I first came across the chocolate-covered potato chip in an American magazine a few years ago.  I love chocolate AND potato chips but the idea of having them together didn't quite appeal to me.  But it piqued my curiosity nonetheless so I was thrilled to receive a box of Royce' Potatochip Chocolate as pasalubong recently.




On first bite, I found them, um, interesting.  The chocolate was very good, smooth and not too sweet.  So was the chip: firm, thick, nicely salted.  My first thought was that it didn't taste very remarkable.  Not bad at all, but just okay.  Maybe it took some getting used to.  So I had another one.  And another.  And another.  You get the picture.  

The taste doesn't blow you away but there's something about the sweet-salty combination of the chocolate-covered potato chip that keeps you coming back for more.  It makes for a nice snack, especially when you can't decide if you want something sweet or salty.  These stayed in my fridge for a few days and they stayed nice and crisp to the very last chip.

My brother and his wife visit Australia every year.  To the customary question of "what do you want from there?", I usually just ask for whatever's interesting to eat when I can't think of anything specific.  Last year, when I was into kettle cooked chips, they found these for me. 



I like how these chips are roughly cut, so they're a little thicker and coarser than a lot of potato chip brands.  They're not very greasy (or maybe I just like to think so) and they have an interesting array of flavors that are quite a departure from the usual cheese and barbecue varieties.   Check out Red Rock Deli's website to see what other interesting stuff they have (the site itself is quite cool).  These chips rock!

I don't cook but I can sure, uh, assemble stuff.  Something I can do well enough is what I call smashed potatoes. Inspired by Market Man's Warm Potato Salad, my version uses marble potatoes that are boiled until fork-tender.  Drain.  In a separate pan, saute (naks, a cooking term) onions, garlic, olive oil and a cured meat (normally ham or some sausage) until the onions are soft.  Mix in the potatoes then smush them very roughly.   It's not really mashed potatoes because you'll just want the soft potatoes to break open.  Once all the ingredients are evenly incorporated, transfer to a serving dish.  

Mix in some mozzarella and parmesan cheese, leaving some to sprinkle on top.  Pop the dish into a microwave oven for a minute or two to melt the cheese, then serve.  It works both as a side dish or something to have by itself.

It's simple and it never fails.  How can you go wrong with potatoes, cheese, and cured meat?