The Unofficial Cook

I’m back and it’s all because my 93-year old uncle found my blog when he entered his name on google and found a post I wrote a couple of years back about our family and soybeans. Go check it out to understand the strange connection. Now, I’m in touch through email with my cousin like I’ve never been before.

I’ve written about some other family members too so I wondered if I was ever going to be found out. It had to be my uncle, the oldest member of our family - and I am so very proud of his internet savvy!

Even if I haven’t written in a few months, I’ve been cooking and trying out different recipes. My biggest thrill is to try out recipes with my family who never really got to try a lot of my cooking. This is one recipe that was a great success with everyone. I cooked this at Eldest Sister’s once and one by one, my nieces and Eldest Nephew came to see me while I was still frying away. They came out to the dirty kitchen, fish in hand, to tell me it was great. It was the sweetest thing. Eldest Sister’s kids are not that easy to please so that show was really appreciated.

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The Philippines has over 7,100 islands and you bet we eat a lot of fish and seafood, aside from rice of course. If you are in the Philippines and thinking of having steaks for dinner, your best bet is fresh fish steaks in calamansi butter sauce.

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This is a rice stick everyone in the Philippines knows. Filipinos like eating this with ripe mangoes, specifically, Philippine mangoes and none of the “manila” mangoes sold in the US. As every Filipino who has traveled outside the country will tell you - nothing beats Philippine mangoes for flavor and texture. And this Suman sa Ibos is perfect with our mangoes. This is salty and not sweet at all, a good contrast to a sweet mango.

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Muruecos is the name of a common rice stick or suman as Filipinos call it. It was supposedly my grandmother’s favorite suman. I like it too and featuring it for Lasang Pinoy 20th Edition, Binalot made the effort certainly worthwhile.

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Another entry for Lasang Pinoy’s 20th Edition titled “Binalot - All Wrapped Up!”. This dish is simply called “Binalot” by Bicolanos. It’s shrimp and coconut meat wrapped in gabi leaves then stewed and braised in coconut cream and herbs and spices.

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This is the first of a series for the Lasang Pinoy Edition 20: Binalot, All Wrapped Up! I’m hosting this month’s event and while I thought it might be interesting, I had no clue what I was in for! This was actually the easiest dish I made so I’m posting it first.
The dishes I had in mind were all rather complicated and required dexterity, which I unfortunately lack….big-time. Then there was the scrounging around for ingredients and recipes. Then there’s the fact that these are recipes I’ve never tried to do on my own before. I even attempted a recipe I’d only heard of, but never tasted or saw before. Despite all the hassles, I enjoyed myself but am glad I’m done with the cooking.

Here’s a photo of the Ginataang Tilapia. It’s a whole tilapia unwrapped from its white bok choy encasement after stewing in coconut cream, onion, garlic and ginger:

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Okay, this dish really doesn’t have a name…Bessie, my mom, just called it “Mrs. Johnson” and the name stuck.  Mrs. Johnson is actually the former American first lady, Lady Bird Johnson.  My mom found this recipe in some American magazine in the 60’s and turned it into her own.  It has very few ingredients, is simple to make and kids always love it.  And so, it’s become one of the family’s favorite recipes….

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Mine started off with a vegetarian squash, longbeans and coconut milk stew. Actually, I’ve featured this same Guinataang Sitaw and Kalabasa recipe in the past but the pot looked so invitingly good that day, I took another photo to show off here. There is a slight variation though - can you spot it? (more…)

This is another common Filipino dish usually using annatto seeds to liven up the color. This particular one didn’t have the coloring because I always like the colors of the vegetables in pancit to show as naturally as possible. I wrote about it in an earlier post on pancit. (more…)

Here’s an interesting way of serving a Filipino favorite, salted red eggs or itlog na maalat.  Youngest Sister prepared it for lunch one time and it was so amazingly fresh tasting and different that I just had to make it for lunch today. The colors in the photo didn’t come out right for some reason but believe me, it made a very appetizing dish in looks and smell. (more…)

This is a salad my mom came up with way back when I was in my teens. It’s a very Filipino salad using the commonly used vegetables, bataw or hyacinth bean and sigadillas, also called winged bean in English. This is just another was you can use these readily available vegetables, aside from adding it to the usual sinigang or pinakbet.  So I hope you’ll give it a try.

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 NOTE:  This is just another of my pending posts that never got posted for one reason or another.

This is pretty much like Eggs Diablo without the heat. This is one of the dishes I made to use up odds and ends in my refriegrator in preparation for the Big Move. It was actually pretty good and made a substantial breakfast for Spouse and myself.

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