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

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.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Pancit Bihon


My Daughter and Pancit
My special pancit with my special someone
I admit, I'm addicted to korean dramas. Having said that, I get my drama fix in a website that has a chatango chatroom like the one right here in my blog (actually, I got that chat idea from there). I've met a lot of interesting friends, and most of them share the same food love as I do: Pansit

Pansit, or pancit, or whatever you may want to call it, is a dish of stir fried rice noodles (bihon or sotanghon) that is made especially for birthdays. They say long noodles give you long life, and the longer the noodles, the better for pancit.