Lent

I'm a catholic and a somewhat alcoholic, don't get me wrong, I do go to mass every Sunday, and occasionally have  a drink or two at Sunday nights. I know i am not a saint, but i believe my wife is. That is why i usually follow lent accordingly with the food at home, OR ELSE.

"Either you sacrifice eating meat or whatever dubious vices you do everyday" -wifey 

Of course, don't ever wonder that I will ever choose the latter.

My favorite's every friday of lent are:

FISH, basically... what kind you ask? TINAPA.. favorite is salinas, my wife's choice--boneless bangus. Make sure you get fresh TINAPA, you should see the skin of the fish intact and should not have a foul odour, it should have a smokey clean smell.

 FRY with little oil, serve hot. Spicy Vinegar with Bagoong(not the bagoong for karekare, which is sweet regular one is preffered). Also Salted egg, with fresh tomatoes and onions.

CRAB MEAT, you can actually get frozen in the the markets of manila today. Make sure it is frozen or just get local crabs.

1/2 kilo Crab meat

1 egg

chopped potatoes 

chopped carrots

1/2 cup Flour

1/4 cup Breading mix

Spring onions

Chopped onions

Minced chilli (optional)

Cooking process:

- Mix ingredients 

- Heat pan with oil

- fry a spoonful of the mixed ingredients until it browns and then turn

- Place in plate with napkin or any clean paper to absorb the excess oil then serve 

BULALO

Bulalo is the official food in our home. It is for me the best food that goes very well when drinking hard liquor. Since Bulalo consists of primarily beef meat with the large bones and tendon meat, that usually takes time for it to soften and be edible, and for the soup to take the beef flavor, it is an opportune time for me to drink and get excited from the aromatic smell.

To be able to produce a very good bulalo, you should initially procure the right ingredients. The beef meat should be fresh, should have the meat wrapped around the big bones, you can see the cartilage meat that line in between the meat, bones that still have the marrow, and most importantly no foul odor, it should smell fresh. ( I also prefer the Knee cap part of the beef-- more tendon thus more beef oi and scum, more nakakabata)

It is also important to take note of your soup pot or casserole, if your using a pressure cooker learn how to use it, or just an ordinary pot that would take longer for the meat to cook fork tender, make sure that the meat you buy would have enough room for the bones, the soup, and vegetables you'd want to put.

This is how I cook Bulalo:

-clean meat, rinse with running water

-place in pot, then put water, meat should be submerged, add small piece of ginger (luya), rock salt

-Place in high temp until soup boils, then bring it down to a simmer, maybe medium depends on your cooking range

-clean scum that rises from soup/ add water when needed

-when meat is fork tender remove from heat

-in a separate pot, put some of the beef stock, cook the spices first, onions, garlic, peppercorns, 

-then cook your preferred vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, chinese cabbage ( pechay daw ba yun?) before serving

By the time you finish cooking the bulalo, if you are like me, you would be in a somewhat drunken state, giving more meaning to sipping hot soup. mmmm 

Hainanese Chicken

“ARTE mo ha! Pinupulutan mo yang ulam natin. Sosyal...” What’s my wife blabbin  about? Hainanese Chicken. “Syempre ako nagluto nyan eh..” Why am I cooking this oriental dish?  Is it because its becoming popular in the local restaurants or is it because I successfully cooked the dish with somewhat flying colors. Its because it consists of my favorite spice; you guessed it chilli, pampulutan, and yes because my wife likes it.

1 Chicken Whole cleaned, remove chicken excess fats, clean inside of chicken

Ginger I big piece

¼ bundle Spring onions

5 cloves garlic

1 piece onion

SESAME OIL

-in a pot that can submerge whole chicken in water, boil some water

-Make sure chicken is clean remove excess fats, rub some rock salt inside the cavity of the chicken

-Place crushed garlic and crushed ginger in the chicken’s cavity

-Carefully tie into a knot the spring onions, place inside the chicken

-clean whole onion, also place inside the chicken

-Cook it in boiling water for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how big the chicken is, place chicken breast down inside pot

Chilli Sauce:
-chopped labuyo
-chopped garlic
-vinegar
-sugar
-chicken stock


Ginger Sauce
-chopped ginger
-chopped garlic
-chopped spring onions
-vinegar
-sugar
-chicken stock


Soybased sweet sauced
-oyster sauce
-soysauce
-honey
-sugar


*mix in a blender, food processor each sauce, or just mix it by hand, amount would depend on how spicy or sweet , or salty the sauce you want it to be, use your tongue please

Pre-alcohol Food ; Easy Food

If you are like me, one who regularly drinks heavy, I’m usually into filling-up the stomach with some easy to eat and tasty food before I drink. Easy to eat in a way that it takes you about 5 minutes to finish the food, not too heavy not too light, it just fills-up the right hunger. Easy food should be cheap and quickly cooks, not too much recados. Homey in a way you can remember your own home, either eating at home or in a carinderia.  Its something that satisfies you, just going about your day, eating and then a few minutes later saying “yeh BUSOOOGG! Sarap BUUSOG!! mamam heeuwha…”

So what’s your Favorite Easy Food?

This is mine:

Giniling pork ½ kilo (choose one with pork fat or you can choose the meat yourself before you have it minced)

Atsuete seeds about ¼ cup, soak it with water

2 big Potatoes, chopped into cubes

1 small red bell pepper, minced without seeds

4 cloves Garlic and 1 bulb onion

Patis

-sauté chopped garlic and onions, careful not to burn

-add some 4 spoons of patis, then add minced pork

-cook pork until its tender, add about 3 cups of water, let it evaporate

-add water from atsuete seeds, not the seeds, use a strainer

-add cubed potatoes and minced bellpeppers, cook the potatoes

- serve with leftover rice, kaning lamig

porkchop pulutan

I spend too much time roaming around the supermarket looking for spices and new food prospects. As a result, our kitchen cabinet is full of spices rarely used. I can never remember how I started with this freakishly uncommon personal characteristic. It had developed to some kind of reflex that just happens when i step inside a supermarket eventually enjoying it. I enjoy reading the labels, understanding each of the items, realizing how I can use it for my next pulutan. From the different available local available items; from Spanish Paprika to Chicken and Pork chop Breadings to some kind of chinese sesame oil. I am quite sure that there a lot of us Filipinos who also enjoy buying these products because there is an increasing variety of spices and are becoming more so popular today.

Hot Sauce is one of the best and most practical spice for me because you can use it to almost all the food you can think of. There are a lot of Hot Sauce that exist in the market today with each there own distinct and unique taste. I recently realized that i have like six kinds already in the shelf. I remember, every time in the supermarket, my mind was figuring out which one is the hottest, which one would taste best on each certain dish, which one is the most practically priced, whats the its liquid consistency, and more on I think unrelated to the matter and more far fetched. I recently bought Mama Sitas Pure Labuyo sauce, uping my collection to 7. I was instantly taken by its intricate packaging and the marketable words on the box. We’ve come a long way from producing export quality products, I felt proud. Now I'm buying because of national pride.

Whats for lunch? Spicy Breaded Porkchop with cucumber garnish plus hot sauce

Porkchop mga ¼ inch per slice

Paprika

Cayenne

Salt

Pepper

Egg

Breading

-Preparing the pork chop, dash of EACH of the spices, not too much, dash only. Rub it with the pork chop on each side. Let stand for about five minutes, let the meat absorb the spices.

-Coat the pork chop with the breading, TAKTAK the porkchop, to remove excess.

-Beat egg, Coat porkchop with beaten egg, TAKTAK remove excess.

-2^nd coating of breading, TAKTAK to remove excess.

-Heat pan, add Cooking oil, amount should submerge porkchop, Heat oil set to medium Temperature

-cook porkchop, about Five minutes on each side

-serve porkchop with cucumber salad and hot sauce

-Cucumber salad: vinegar, sugar salt and black pepper dressing

Balibago easy shrimps

Balibago is a place in Angeles Pampanga that was mentioned to be a meeting place of infamous carnappers by an informant of Erwin Tulfo, if you are like me watching every kind of news. From the start of the investigation and the somewhat prolonging media exposure, some bits and pieces are eventually building up the whole picture.

The informant has mentioned that these people were frequently meeting at the wee hours of the evening on the different bars that surround Balibago. I used to go to Balibago years ago and I remember Balibago bars, these places with not so good ambiance but they have cheap fresh beer and really excellent pulutan. I'm not a car napper for your information. Recently, I remember being there with my wife and some of her work friends in a sort of restaurant ktv lounge, that was comparably cheap, entrance and use of videoke was consumable on a really long list of pulutan menu. Everything's changed, everything's high class ambiance, themed restaurant scenarios; Though there are establishments that you would still notice to be caught up from the past. Most of the places have evolved to be really clean and respectable.

I remember about 12 years ago, a cousin of mine would take me to balibago bars. I could never forget the SIZZLING SPICY GAMBAS in a certain tiny bar, where I can never remember to go back to, owned by a BAKLA who I kind of recall, also does the cooking cooking of the food. Nope, I don't think he puts "gayuma" on it. 

Sizzling Plate

½ KILO Hipon/Shrimps -Not too big not too small. I prefer the dark colored ones

1 RED and 1 GREEN Bell peper Chopped into squares

White Onion Chopped into squares

Garlic Chopped

I Cup Banana Ketchup

Hot Sauce

Worcestershire Sauce                

                                                            

-wash hipon/shrimps, remove long tentacles or the long balbas of the shrimp, then drain

-place shrimps in wok/kawali, add salt then cover and cook until shrimps turn red

-DO NOT OVER COOK SHRIMPS, first sign that ALL the shrimps turn red remove from kawali, with all its juices, there should be juices from steaming the shrimps.

-heat the kawali, add butter and the garlic, onions and the bell pepper ;sauté

-Add the Drained  juices from the shrimp then the ketchup and hot sauce, how much hot sauce you can bear.

-Add Worcestershire sauce for taste and if you prefer sugar for some added sweetness

-Prepare the sizzling plate, place the shrimps then pour the sauce

Balibago, Angeles is near a San Miguel Plant, that is probably why most of the beers are fresh and the people who cook are mostly Capampangans. For whatever reason these carnapping people meet in these places, I am pretty sure that we agree on some things.

Corned Tuna

For as long as I can remember, I have been eating the same canned TUNA, Century brand hot and spicy flava. I remember in the late nineties, there was this brand Freska, during some of my younger merrier days, a friend  suggested and bought this as our pulutan with the addition of crushed salted crackers(sky flakes) as garnish. I forgot how good it must’ve tasted or was really wasted at that that time but what lingered to my memory was the puke of the guy who bought it, freska na freska.

If you would choose to Eat straight from the can I would suggest, with some calamansi/Philippine local lemon, squeezed straining the seeds, and adding some chopped onions preferably the red ones.

These days, there have been splurges of tuna brands being introduced to the consumers that has eventually resulted to competing markets that lead to a lot of different flavors, colorful advertisements and hopefully cheaper prices. If you are like me an average joe in our today's market, you are going to buy something out of reflex because you saw it being advertised on TV. What the hell does Tuna paella taste? Does it really taste like paella? really? The other day, in a 24 hour store… I decided to buy San Marino “CORNED” Tuna Chili flavor. Supposedly- “Maanghang” so I just had to try one. Prepared it by sautéing it with Garlic and Onions, then added egg as suggested by a friend. (don't Add egg it taste better)

“Ano Ulam?” wife sez, I said “San marino chilli “corned” Tuna with egg”. “ Ayoko nyan, Ayoko si Marian Rivera eh..” http://www.sanmarino.com.ph/subpages/recipes.aspx