we would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today

It's another good roast. (well, panfry actually.) This was tonight's dinner.

from left to right: salad, burger, campbell's cream of mushroom and french fries.

The salad was a good way of putting veggies into your burger, it's like a coleslaw but with lettuce, zucchini and tomatoes with a dijon mustard, honey and olive oil dressing. the burger itself has good ground round, bread crumbs and egg (cholo says though if you're using good ground beef with the fat mixed in, you don't need eggs), sauteed red onions, parmesan cheese and mustard, and spices (salt,pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin)—all nice and tender. of course, you can't go wrong with milk mixed in campbell soup, and of course fries with roasted garlic.

so all in all really, another good dinner from Cholo.




my little tips: try cumin on your fries, and homemade wasabi mayo (you'll use more wasabi than you'd expect) on your burgers.

Another nice eating thing:

Softbank Dining from We Love You So on Vimeo.

hamboned and homecooked!

this was sunday dinner. cholo's cocido. and if you look closely at the brisket, it's pink because of the ham bones he threw in.

stews have never been particularly exciting, cholo doesn't like it when i would put sinigang, or tinola or worse, nilaga on the menu. until we found the right meat.

or in this case, the right bones.

so family, expect this to show up at least once during our gatherings. it's not all about roasting and salads.

it seems appropriate that for a night with a warm, hearty stew-ish meal, the table was full. like a real Sunday dinner.

no banzai!

so we finally tucked into the porkchops i left to sleep in a bed of yogurt. and finally figured out the cuisine reference —greek or mediterranean. so it would have been opaaaaahhh porkchops except it was suprisingly subtle. so subtle that you can't even hear the t na! cholo even put A1 sauce!

i was worried that it would be a barrage of flavors when i tasted the marinade yesterday, the garlic was really sharp and loud. i guess the baking did something to the garlic and even the chili oil! kuya said it was the slight aftertaste that told you there was garlic. and it was so pale.

so am thinking that i should have grilled it, made me htink of something i heard on a jaime oliver rerun—if you've been using the oven for meat for so long, anything on the grille is so much more flavorful.

The next time we try this recipe, we'll whip out the charcoal.

outta hiatus

golly, it's been almost seven months, and that definitely doesn't mean that we haven't been eating. we just haven't been eating out, much!

cholo will have to post about his mushroom pasta soon!

and today, i'm trying out a banzai yogurt marinade that's been cribbed off this more because the yogurt is about to go viral*.

but am giddy with the fact that i used whatever was available in the cupboards so that's thyme, rosemary, an upended dijon mustard bottle (looked like a wino if you ask me.)

[yes, there will be more anthropomorphic food popping up, am not an emotional eater for nothing.)

and of course, a generous contribution from the graceful-necked olive oil+chili+cardamom concoction by ferran adria and borges.

yes, they deserve a picture!

i love how that seems like a chef and writer have gone into the business of making love potions.

but just a shoutout to HAI in SM Marikina. Though their service is a ragtag pack of shouting (No! Not that table! Table 4!) and chipped bowls—okay, one chipped bowl—their dimsum is great.

[was trying for an awesome dimsum rhyme, but as you can see, no ninja happening there.)

have pictures of just how jampacked their siomai and siopaos are, but i can't find my card reader. just think fat and meaty, like a hotdog but you know, not.

[edit! here are the pictures! it's from my phone, so really grainy.]




so for a quick and malaman dimsum fix, Hai is good.

we be back soon. will report back on my banzai porkchops.

otherwise, fatchick out.

*panic brought upon by the memories of the strawberry yogurt tin that evolved sentience and led a mutated mutiny in the fridge. zombie fruitcake, renegade fruits and the like.
we all have our battle scars.

some quick bites

a degustacion of what has been written about food in the past week:

1. cookstr.com: a site chock full of recipes from the more famous chefs.

2. chow.com: another fab site. i subscribed to their daily recipes, haven't been able to try any. but i just like knowing that they're there.

3. Carl Warner's Foodscapes is a testament to how some people play with their food. (the image on top is an example.)


4. A little snooty, but I've always liked how some restaurants harp on good ingredients. The Dragon Well Manor in Huangzhou believes in many trips to the market everyday for the freshest of produce.

and a new chef crush (who do i have so far? anthony bourdain and rocco dispirito)

Heston Blumenthal

I caught him last night on the Lifestyle Channel, and he was searching for the perfect burger. So really, a guy who worries about the perfect bite-size (two fingers), makes his own buns, patties and cheese slices (different kinds of cheese, a sherry infused with herbs and sodium citrite to bind them all), and harps on using the seeds and pulp of the tomato because that's where most of the umami taste is—well, is love.

He owns a restaurant called The Fat Duck.

And a quick recommendation: Foccacia in A-venue along makati ave.

Sunday Meals

It has been six months that posts have been made to this blog. Work matters have kept me away from doing so but during the interval we had spoken about which restaurants to comment on. High on the list was a comparison between People's Palace and Silk high end Thai restaurants. We have also discovered Mickeys the German deli cum French bakery along Jupiter Street. There is also the Ice Cream Bar in Rockwell as well as the Bakers Dozen bazaar at Rockwell too. The butter cake from the Vargas Kitchen has been a favorite pasalubong for my same age friends.

There was also a WSJ writer who waxed praises on pancit luglug, crispy pata etc. Anthony Bourdain of No Reservations fame was also in the Philippines to shoot a segment about Filipino food. He also was fascinated by luglug and thought sisig was great bar chow.

However what I would like to write about are the Sunday breakfasts and dinners that my children have been putting together in the past few weeks. An offshoot of belt tightening due to the times we decided to forego eating out after Sunday Mass. Instead we agreed that Sunday dinner would be prepared by whoever felt like doing it. Cholo no 2 son and Mikey no 3 son have been the main cooks.(not yet chefs). We refer to Cholo as the Grill Master while Mikey is our Salad Master. Typical dinners we have had are grilled Rib Eye, Spare Ribs and last night Cholo bought some salmon which he pan fried in olive oil. It was simply delicious. Cholo had bought kitchen utensils like a madeleine, a real cheese grater and an attractive pepper grinder. He has used these utensils to prepare salads while Mikey put together an appropriate dressing. Cholo has also been trying to learn how to prepare pasta agli olio and last night was the closest he has gotten the formula right.
Lately Anina had discovered Goolai salad Packs which are innovative salad mixes that mixes greens with tropical fruits like pomelo, tangerine and a fruit from Vietnam called a dragon fruit. It is then topped with interesting dressings like poppyseed or strawbeery vinaigrette. This had simplified preparation time for salads.
Anina normally accompanies Cholo to the supermarket to get the Sunday stuff as she has become our Household Manager and prepares our weekly supermarket list. I still do the actual supermarketing.
Aside from the Sunday dinners Cholo is also our Sunday breakfast cook. He is basically a bacon and omelet man but yesterday inspired by the Iron Chef episode that featured breakfat meals, he put together with his omelet and longaniza home fries which were fries with cummin that gave it a different kick. There was also beans fired in longaniza fat. It was one of the best breakfasts we have had in a while.

Javier no 1 son and our film director provides comic relief while Tita Didi who is her mother's daughter makes sure we bus the table and clean after eating.

I must go now because the dinner bell has rang and must end by thanking my children for such great family meals at a fifth of the cost of eating out. One of the perks of being the head of the family. Ciao

on a sunny sunny monday

while warming up for the day's work, i try to put together things to entertain people.
in celebration of the tony's evening we had last night at the tail-end of the typhoon, i have a clip from stew, the guy who did passing strange.



the song is called "work from the wound," and i got it from the media page of the musical, passing strange.

enjoy.

there are other things to come. and yes, we have been eating.
i'm proud to say that i cooked the fried rice last night with the help of a spice paste made by asian home gourmet. my favorite things to do ---- basically chopping ingredients and throwing them all together in a large pan.

now back to your real life. and the sun, most of all.

(ning rebelling against the urge to be a copy machine)