First off, I'd like to greet everyone a Happy New Year! Its a Dragon Year and they say its the best year to launch new enterprises and projects.

One of the resolutions I have for this year is to update my recipe list again. I didn't really learn any new dishes in the last few months. It was  pretty mundane lifestyle until mid December when my mom arrived from overseas. She bought a new oven and we used it to cook a few classic dishes.

We had roast beef and lasagna as our main dishes for our New Year's eve meal. The lasagna was the more work intensive of the two so I will make a longer post for that within the month. I am grateful that there a few other blog worthy events and recipes coming. Creating content isn't as easy once you've ran out of your initial stock of experience and recipes.

Anyway, on to the recipe.

Ingredients :
A hunk of sirloin around 1 kg.
A tablespoon each of  dried thyme, rosemary and ground black pepper.
Around 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of rock salt.
1 whole garlic bulb, medium sized.
3 tablespoons of flour (for the gravy)
Half a kilogram of potatoes, small sizes or cut into wedges
4 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil (optional)

Procedure for Roast :
- Purchase beef at least a day before cooking it.
- Pat beef dry with paper towels then rub it with the thyme, rosemary and pepper
- Store in a plastic bag or ziploc bag in keep in the chiller or coldest part of the fridge but do not freeze it.
- Take out the beef from the refrigerator an hour before you will bake it.
- Pierce beef with a long  knife and insert peeled garlic cloves into the holes.
- Space the holes evenly around the beef and use up all the garlic.
- Coat with salt and additional spices if preferred.
- Preheat oven to 400 deg C.
- Place beef in roasting tray fatty side down.
- Roast for about 20 minutes. Add 10 minutes for every additional 1/2kg

- Take out roast and turn it over. Slather potatoes in butter and place around the roast before returning it to the oven.
- Roast for another 20 minutes. Add 10 minutes for every additional 1/2kg
- Check roast's internal temperature with a meat thermometer. You can turn the heat off if the internal temperature of the meat reaches 60-70 degrees C.
- Take tray out and cover it with aluminum foil. Let the meat rest this way for 15 minutes.
- Slice beef into thin portions. Only slice enough for consumption.
- Store left over roast in an airtight container.

Procedure for Gravy :
- Collect all the juices from the roasting tray, strain out any large bits.
- Dissolve flour in 1/2 cup of cold water
- In a pan, mix butter and the juice from the roast.
- Once the butter melts, add the flour and water mix
- You may add more spice or salt if you like.
- Simmer on low heat and stir continuously until the sauce reaches desired consistency.

It's easier to slice the beef once it has cooled down a bit. The thinner slices the better. The potatoes absorbed some of the flavors of the roasting beef and it made a great side dish to the roast.

The trickiest part of the roasting process is figuring out if the interior of the meat is cooked. It is much easier to gauge this if you have a meat thermometer. If you don't have one, you will have to rely on the cooking time for the beef.  1 kg usually takes an hour to cook. Add 10 minutes for every 500 grams over 1 kilo.  It's quite easy to overcook the roast and end up with a hard lump of beef. 
Use a fork to test the beef. It should  be easy to push down the fork into the roast and juices should  come out. It's better to have it slightly rare and tender than well done and dried out.  You can always slice a bit of the beef  and cook it separately in an oven toaster or pan if you want it well done.

Until next time!

A few weeks ago me and my fiancee went on a 4 day vacation in Puerto Galera, Mindoro. My partner informed me that she would be able to take a few days off around the middle of May.  I was hoping there was enough time to setup a trip to Palawan, but budgetary and time constraints limited our options.

We were also a bit reluctant to shell out cash for plane tickets that would cost more than the accommodation, food and the tour combined. I promised her I would be on the lookout for a plane ticket sale which have flights that would fall on May next year.

Our  solution to the vacation dilemma was to look for a beach or vacation spot that could be reached by land and didn't take more than a day to travel. I did some research and narrowed our choices down to Puerto Galera in Mindoro, Laiya in Batangas and Pundaquit in Zambales. These 3 locations are familiar to me and I know how to get to them by commuting.

We decided to go to Puerto Galera as it had more to activities to offer for our 4 day stay.

We ended up in El Canonero lodge at Barangay Talipanan,  a nice quiet lodge in a nice quiet part of town.

The lodge exterior was classy. It looked more like a private residence than an inn. Prices for food and lodging in the area was about 20-30% higher than in white beach but we preferred the less crowded environment.

Our stay was pleasant enough, my only real gripe was how late the staff would come in during the morning. I'm used to 24 hour desk service. I will probably try the other inns in the area when I come back.

The beach at Talipanan can be considered an extension of the one in white beach. You can walk from one end to the other in about 1-2 hours depending on your pace. There are a few rock outcroppings along the way but these are easily traversed during low tide. The most difficult part to cross would be the rocky area between Aninuan beach and white beach.

The beach in this part of Mindoro is a mix of rounded pebbles and fine white sand. The sand is not as powdery as in Panglao or Boracay and the pebbles require you to swim with foot wear on, but other than that, the beach is still as charming as ever, especially when the sun starts to set.

I regret not being able to go snorkeling during our trip. We also missed walking to the falls. We did enjoy walking along the beach, swimming and skipping stones along the shore. Mostly we slept, especially during the hottest part of the day. We got a couples massage on our 2nd night. Quite a pleasant experience since I haven't had a massage in while.

The shopping and dining establishments in White Beach, Puerto Galera have undergone a major upgrade. When I was here 4 years ago, only a few of the beach side restaurants were fully cemented.  Several now accept credit card payments .

It's also nice to know that most of the development seem to be limited to this area.

White beach has become the default entry and exit point for this part of Puerto Galera. While RORO ferries cannot dock here, there are plenty of large capacity banka ferrying people to and from the Batangas Pier.

I noticed that the minimum capacity of the ferries are now a hundred plus.This is definitely an improvement as the larger bankas are safer albeit slower.

The biggest surprise I encountered was at the Batangas Pier. It's as good as a domestic airport terminal. No more hawkers or unruly baggage boys. It made the trip very pleasant.

Overall it was a good vacation, not on par as our trip to Bohol a few years ago but we definitely felt more rested after this trip. The significant improvements at the Batangas Pier make it a convenient jump off point for a trip to Romblon and Calapan. Trips which I will likely undertake soon.

Until next time.



Here are a few very useful resources I referred to when I planning this trip :
http://romanleoreyman.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/talipanan-beach-puerto-galera/
http://www.lakwatseradeprimera.com/puerto-galera-lucas-lodge-talipanan-beach/
http://www.divingresortelcanonero.com/resort_eng.html

Cooked this recently. I will add the recipe post once http://www.filipinorecipes.eu/ posts my recipe contribution.

This was worth the 7 hours cooking time and the preparation. I was able to pull off my first decent batch of kare kare. I call it decent because I made it from scratch, without any helper mixes added.

The Recipe can be found here : http://www.filipinorecipes.eu/beef-recipes/kare-kare.html

This version of fried spring rolls is new to me. I picked up the recipe from my mother who had learned it while working overseas as a cook. This version shares a few common ingredients with the Filipino lumpia, namely; shrimp, onions, and dried wood mushrooms. What makes it stand out for me is the use of a different type of wrapper. It is delicious when used in fresh spring rolls but it really stands out when fried.

Ingredients
200 grams rice vermicelli or sotanghon
100 grams chopped spring onions
100 grams finely sliced (julienned) carrots
200 grams dried wood mushroom or "dried fungus"
200 grams shelled shrimps
250 grams ground chicken meat
100 grams minced garlic
200 grams minced onions
Fish sauce (patis)  and pepper to taste

Procedure :

1. Sauté onion and garlic in a small amount of pork lard or cooking oil.

2. Once onion is translucent, add shrimp and mix well.

3. Once shrimps are cooked, add ground chicken and cook until slightly browned.

 4. Soak dried mushrooms and rice vermicelli in two separate bowls of hot water.

5. Once dried mushrooms are tender, drain them and slice into strips then add it to the ground chicken mixture. Stir well.

6. Season with fish sauce and pepper to desired taste.

7. Drain softened sotanghon and add to ground chicken mixture. Stir well and remove from heat. Set aside

8. Soak the stiff spring roll wrappers in water for about 5 seconds.

9. Place wrapper on a clean plate and scoop 2 tablespoon of filling near the bottom end.

10. Roll wrapper around the mixture securely and seal on either side. The wrapper will be soft and sticky at this point and will adhere easily. If not just brush it with a little water.

11. Set aside spring rolls.

12. Heat oil in a pan, there should be enough oil to cover a whole spring roll.

There should be enough mix to make at least 10 rolls.

This batch turned out quite well especially when eaten while the wrapper is still crunchy. Once the spring rolls cool down, the rice wrapper tend to soften up faster than local lumpia wrappers. I would recommend that you only cook a small batch for each serving. There is also a more elaborate version of the dip. The recipe for that easily available online, but some of the recommended ingredients are not that common in Philippine groceries.

I will be try using rice wrapper in lumpiang sariwa. I'll have that posted soon.

Ka Fredo

       I admit I have been quite inconsistent with my blog updates. I usually have 1 or 2 every month which is still not as often as I want to. My cooking and recipe testing is still ongoing but I don't do it primarily for the blog.  Recently I was asked to contribute recipes to another site. Last January I was able to test out around 20 recipes and submitted those to filipinorecipes.eu. You might want to check it out. A few of my favorite recipes are posted there.

This blog has just reached its 1st year. I started this blog to learn about blogging and the web. I had never planned to earn anything from it. I placed a few ads here and there and entered some contests, hoping to earn enough to pay for the domain name. No bites yet, but having a blog has benefited me in other ways.

There are a few insights I'd like to share. First, if you google for tulingan or ginataang tulingan, my tulingan posts seem to come up either first or on the front page. I'm no expert and I'm stumped how it happened, but it does amuse me a whole lot. It doesn't work on bing or yahoo search though. Second, I am happy to say that this blog has helped me land a few good online job leads. So the blog is paying for itself, but indirectly. Third, I have learned a lot from the upkeep of this blog, mainly, knowledge about the online environment and article writing.

I'd like to thank everyone who has visited my site and I hopemost of you have gotten something useful out of my kitchen and cuisineexperiments.  I am hoping to be able to make postings regularly soon, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

Ka_Fredo

*The picture above is inasal syle chicken cooked in a cast iron griddle. The food was my contribution to my family's Tagaytay Picnic.

I just drank a bottle of Minute Maid Pulpy. They say it’s got ‘no preservatives added’. Aw, c’mon…It’s bottled juice. Is that even possible? So I thought maybe... I'd check the label on the bottle.I didn’t believe it the first time I heard it’s got no preservatives added.  So I read the ingredients (even the fine print) and everything checked out! It really has NO PRESERVATIVES ADDED!  That means it doesn’t have ingredients that may turn out to be allergens, or worse...carcinogens!  Whew! Now that’s healthy goodness that tastes so good, I... would choose it over soft drinks anytime.



So okay, it’s got no preservatives added. That’s really good, right?  Not just because it doesn’t have those icky, harmful ingredients, but it also means... it's  a good source of Vitamins C since it'smade from real fruit juice.

So far anyone who still has a hard time believing that Minute Maid has got no preservatives added - meaning it's THAT natural, it's almost like it's plucked straight from the tree, it's just as Mother Nature wanted your orange juice to be, it's got nothing but the good stuff yes, none of those potentially toxic stuff that can harm your brain, kidneys, heart; cause tumors aargh- the list of preservatives' bad effects just go on!!! Anyway, just to prove a point on just how good Minute Maid Pulpy is 'cause it's got NO PRESERVATIVES ADDED, I'm gonna stock up a dozen or two in my fridge so I can drink it anytime I want.

Feels good to know about the real pulpy deal, right? C’mon show me a smile on the comment box, and you might win yourself a Really Pulpy Deal! (That’s a chance to win a Minute Maid gift pack simply by commenting. Sweet! C'mon you just might be picked as the lucky 'commentor'!)

Love,

ka_fredo

This post is from a Facebook contest I joined. I like fruit juice in general and Minute Maid's offerings are one of the few that I purchase regularly. If you have a blog, you might want to try your hand at their contest too. Leave comments about my post and you can win too!

A standard fare during fiestas and family occasions. This is a very basic version of this dish. I  will be featuring other lumpia recipes in the coming weeks.

Lumpiang shanghai filling varies per cook. In this version of lumpiang shanghai, I used the most common ingredients. Other possible ingredients that can be added to the filling are chopped shrimp, ground beef and raisins. I encourage you to add your own personal touch to your version of lumpiang shanghai.

Procedure :

1. Sautee onion and garlic in cooking oil.

2. When onion becomes translucent, add
ground pork, ground pepper and chopped celery. Stir well until pork is well done.

3. Add grated carrots and keep stirring until meat and carrots are mixed thoroughly.

4. Add soy sauce and continue mixing.

5. Add 1/2 cup stock or water. Set fire to lowest and let mixture simmer. Do not let the mixture dry out.

6. Check if carrots are cooked and adjust saltiness.

7. Once carrots are done, turn off heat and set aside.

8. Once mixture is cool, prepare lumpia wrapper and a cup of water.

9. Put 1 1/2 tablespoon of mixture in the wrapper, spread lenght wise.

10. Roll wrapper tightly around the filling mixture taking care not to tear the wrapper.

11. Moisten the last 2 inches of wrapper to make the wrapper stick and prevent it from unraveling.

15. Let oil drain from the cooked lumpia, use paper to absorb excess oil.

16. Cut cooked lumpia into 3 inch pieces and serve with a sweet and sour sauce or ketchup.

Lumpiang shanghai is best served warm and crunchy. It should be consumed immediately after the excess oil is drained. Uncooked lumpia can be stored in the freezer. Make sure that they do not get wet.

Until next time.

I bought some Lamb after I saw a buy 1 take 1 sale for lambchops at Mr. Sy's hypermarket.  I made half of the chops into curry and the rest I just fried. This is my 3rd attempt at lamb curry and it has yielded the best results so far.

Feel free to adjust some of the listed quantities of chopped spices to lighten up the sauce a bit. I had to resort to the regular packaged curry powder but on my next opportunity I'll try to use pure powdered spices .

Ingredients:

300 gms Lamb.
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 medium sized bell pepper finely chopped
2 pcs long green chili finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped mint leaves
3/4 cup finely chopped onions (2 medium pcs)
2 tbsp garlic finely chopped

1 tbsp curry powder
1/2 tsp white pepper
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 cup water / stock
1/2 cup fresh yogurt
1 tbsp butter (or any type of cooking oil)
1 tbsp salt
1 whole cucumber sliced
1 cup potatoes (small or chopped)

Procedure:

1. Salt lamb chops and fry in pan with melted butter or cooking oil until brown on both sides. Set aside

2. Sautee garlic and onions in the same pan used for frying the lamb.

3. When the onions have become translucent, add the rest of the chopped spices. Fry for 2-3 minutes while stirring continuously. Set aside.

4. Put fried lamb and fried spices in a pot. Add water or stock. Choose the correct pot size. The lamb should be submerged in the broth. I used my clay pot to cook this dish.

5. Add yogurt and powdered spices when broth begins to simmer. Mix the spices well into to the liquid.

6. Add tomato paste and stir until dissolved completely.

7. Let simmer until lamb is tender and separates easily from the bone. The chopped ingredients should be blended well into the sauce after 45 minutes of simmering. Add water as needed. Do not allow the liquid to evaporate completely.

8. Once desired tenderness is reached, allow the sauce to thicken. You can remove the pot's lid to allow for more water to evaporate.

I hope you enjoy this simple dish as much as I did. If I get my hands on some goat meat, I'll make a goat version of this curry. 

If you have access to Indian spices, try to use those instead of the mixed powders. The curry powders we have in the groceries tend to have less of the more expensive spices.

Until next time!

I I bought this from a food truck during my San Diego trip. Its fries with a whole lot of toppings. This was the spicy pork version. I can probably make some but I'll have to research on how to make guacamole. It was a very filling lunch.