Events That Make Life Worth While

Monday, August 27, 2012

Seafood Linguine

Copyright Notice: This is NOT my recipe. This is made by a dear Italian Chef Pasquale Sciarappa. Thank you, Chef, for answering my request!!!

I had a great time with a wonderful friend when she treated me out for pasta in Burgoo. The moment I tasted the dish, it became my instant favorite. I've been trying to search for a great recipe to re-do the recipe and I made a request to Chef Pasquale. Amazingly, he answered my email and made this!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Home-Made Burger

Trying to vamp up the weekly menu by doing something "out of the box" in terms of home food is concerned. I got tired of cooking the usual fair, so I decided to give some umph to a boring menu by doing home-made burgers for dinner.

And the choice was well taken - and well eaten.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Tartar Sauce

Tartar sauce is one of the easiest condiments to make. It's a creamy white sauce with a mayonnaise base with herbs, spices, and other ingredients to give it character an depth. It was traditionally used in the Europe to bring out the flavor of steak tartare, but here in the Philippines, we often use it as a condiment to fried or battered fish or seafood.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Beer Battered Tilapia

I have had my fill of the plain old fried tilapia. And I also don't like it if I happen to get one that smells like moss (lumot) and I get a sharp taste of than when get a bite of that milky flesh. Despite the risk of getting some additional and unwanted flavors, tilapia still remains for me one of the most delicious-tasting fresh water fish. So, I decided to change the usual or traditional dish and add a little zing to it by using beer batter.

Beer battered tiliapia is not fish that you will beat to death using the beer bottle. Have pity on the poor fish, it has done you no harm. You simply create your own batter using beer instead of the iced water for added flavor. And don't worry if you have kids because the alcohol content of the batter will evaporate during the cooking process.

Ingredients

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Rellenong Bangus

"You can't make me eat bang-gus, baby." That undying declaration greeted my sister when she told her Fil-Canadian then-fiance (now her husband) that she'll be cooking bangus for dinner. He, like my husband and many others out there, absolutely detest bangus (milkfish) because it's full of fine fish bones that even those with good eyesight can't get out entirely at times.

Presenting my brother-in-law with boneless bangus will not work either. The moment he sees it's bangus and the milky flesh of it, he will reject it outright. But my sister made true of her claim when she said "I'll make you eat milkfish, baby, and you will like it!" My sister's secret? Rellenong bangus.

Rellenong bangus is a special dish, which is actually stuffed bangus. However, preparing it is so time consuming that it is served only during special occasions. We used to spend about 3-4 hours to prepare and cook relleno until some innovative individual came up with a technique that lessened the whole prep time to nearly half. Let's talk about the ingredients first.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Chicken Morcon

My eldest sister cooked the very first chicken morcon that I ate. I was so young then, all I wanted was to eat and not to take any part of the whole cooking process. It tasted so good, I wanted to taste it again. However, a can of crushed pineapple then was very expensive and our meager resources were diverted to something else.

Chicken morcon is the economical version of the traditional beef morcon. It is made with chicken breast fillet that is marinated in pineapple syrup to give the meat that sweet, tangy flavor.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Ramen

Noodles will always be at the top list of comfort foods, and my all-time favorite is ramen. I've had my first taste of ramen when I was a child, and the most popular brand then was Nissin's Ramen. It disappeared then came back again years ago, but the flavor is no longer the same.

There are three top local brands of ramen here in the Philippines: Lucky Me, Payless, and Maggi. Each of them have different flavors and consistency of noodles, but the one I like the most is jjampong. As for foreign brands, the best out there for me will be Shin noodles.