Our family has always bonded over food. And the one thing that I will forever associate with my grandfather is his Bacalao dish. The clamor for this is so monumental that my uncles & aunts (and us grandkids) fight over who can get the most servings. Bacalao for us is served every Holy Week, especially on Good Friday and Black Saturday. It has become tradition that we beg my grandpapa,Papajoelouis, to make it every year and our vacation to Legazpi will not be complete without it. Now that he is getting older the dish is harder to make because (1) with worsening eyesight it is harder to debone the fish and (2) he forgets the recipe. Believe me Ive tried coercing it from him but it might be so secret that what he tells me doesn't seem to taste as good as his final product. Luckily I was able to find a recipe that is somewhat similar and with a little tweaks my uncles and aunt say it tastes just as good!! What will u need? 1. Salted (daing) labahita -500 g 2. Olive oil for frying and seasoning -1/3 c 3. Garlic (chopped) -1/3c 4. Potatoes (chopped and sliced circularly) -4 big pcs 5. Garbanzos - 2 cans 6. Tomato sauce (200g) and paste (3tbsp) 7. Bell pepper (sliced into strips)-4pcs 8. Olives (optional) First soak the fish overnight to remove most of the salt. Then dredge in a little flour and fry with olive oil. Afterwards drain and wait for it to cool. Once cooled you can debone the fish. In a pan saute the garlic, add the garbanzos followed by the tomato sauce and paste. Afterwards add the chopped potatoes, bell peppers and olives. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes. While this is happening you can fry the circularly sliced potatoes. We will use this as toppings once we plate the Bacalao. After the 15 minutes is up you can add the deboned fish. Stir every once in a while for about 5 minutes. Once the time is up you can plate the dish!! Place all of the Bacalao in a pyrex dish and arrange the fried potatoes on top. Tadah serve while hot on a bowl of heaping rice! What i love about this is that it gets better every time you reheat the Bacalao. Yummmm!!!
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After a dismal showing of my New Year's Resolutions last February -- was too busy and the month flew by so fast!! -- I decided to start March on a better footing. So while doing grocery yesterday, I realized that we had those really nice wheat soft tortillas in the freezer and I could probably make tacos burrito-style. (Thus tackling one of my resolutions of learning a new recipe each month.) This wasnt so challenging especially with the help of a little seasoning. All the dish needed was a lot of prep for the ingredients. So March Recipe: SOFT TACOS Ingredients: * Taco Mix * 1/2 K ground beef * shredded cabbage * shredded cheese * wheat tortillas (you can use regular ones actually or normal corn shells you get in the grocery) * chopped tomatoes and onions PROCESS: 1. Drizzle a little olive oil on a skillet and cook the ground beef until brown. 2. Follow packet instructions on the taco mix and pour the mixture on the cooked meat. Simmer for 3 minutes to let the meat absorb the taco seasoning. I like to burn the meat a little bit so that it has crunch and bitter taste. 3. Remove meat from the skillet. Wipe oil and put back on the heat. Get one tortilla and place it in the middle of the pan. Quickly add cheese, lettuce, the meat mixture, tomatoes and onions. Keep on the pan until the cheese melts a bit, slowly fold it onto itself. 4. Put on a plate and eat!! The entire recipe is really simple and I was able to cook the dish in 30 minutes. Really quick, more so if you prepare the cabbage, tomatoes and onions before hand. According to my perennial food taster, my husband, it was a winner dish!! He ate 3 pieces in succession so that must mean it's true. For added spice drizzle a little hot sauce and try the entire thing for yourself! I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed our recent family trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. We spent our days walking around Ho Chi Minh and Siem Reap taking in the scenery, locals and food. My favorite Vietnamese Dish is Bun Cha or a rice noodle salad with vegetables, meat, rolls and vinegar dressing. This of course will not be complete without Cafe Sua Da (iced coffee) and Goi Cuon (fresh spring rolls). Luckily, I was able to enroll in a cooking class by Cycloresto and one of the dishes taught were the fresh spring rolls. The teacher, Chef Vu, speaks in fast english peppered with Vietnamese accents. He is easily understandable and makes the entire class very enjoyable and fun. After the session you would have learned to cook 3 dishes (appetizer, main dish and soup) as well as dabble in food decoration by making a rose out of tomato and a heart from cucumber pieces. Another tour I enjoyed a lot was a walking food tour Martin found on viator. A local guide takes you to jaunts famous for offering good, cheap and authentic Vietnamese fair. The tour company's call to fame is that it will offer authentic local sites that aren't touristy and will give you a taste of real Ho Chi Minh. Our 2 hour trip took us to holes in the wall like the old market where we sat by the street munching on Goi Cuon, sugarcane juice and spicy noodles. Our last stop was in a cafe owned and managed by a local star --- it's situated in the old quarters pretty much like our Malate and renovated to be a hip place for young ones to congregate to enjoy music. The owner even treated us to a private concert of 3 songs-- one was a local ballad and 2 english songs. This was such a treat!! She even said she'll call us up when she visits the Philippines and will offer to sing for free. After a few days in Vietnam, we hopped on a plane to visit the world's biggest temple complex and UNESCO World Heritage Site: Angkor Wat Siem Reap is "same,same but different" since our last visit. Our favorite haunts like Blue Pumpkin and Koulen Restaurant are still very much in vogue while the food has grown leaps making local cuisine much more palatable to my tongue. (Fish Amok is a local dish hence the title Pho & Amok) On our first night, after a cultural show, our tired feet were pampered with a 1hour massage by our "suki" parlor --- right across Pub Street. This was the same place mart and I would go for massages when our bodies got too tired from temple hopping or bargain hunting. We also tried out this tex-mex restaurant along Pub Street that served awesome burgers, chili con carne and pork. Martin got his fill of roast duck which was served with rice and veggies for only USD3.00. Of course the main attraction was the temple complex which took most of our second day in the country. There is something about Bayon, Angkor Wat and Ta Phrom that just takes your breathe away. You've got to realize that these complexes were built in a time where cranes, trucks and bulldozers did not exist. The sheer amount of rock and workers mobilized to create these masterpieces are unimaginable. Many of the workers, according to our guide, paid with their lives because constructing then was real back-breaking work. But their sacrifice lives on today--- surviving multiple wars and human intervention. Sitting atop Angkor Wat's central temple and taking in the forest view made the entire trip!! I think visiting the complex should be in everyone's bucket list-- I guess I've made my quota being blessed enough to see it twice. I guess to summarize what has already become a lengthy blog post is that the trip was a great great great one! (di ba obvious?) And I do recommend that you at least go to one of these countries once in your life. Great learning experiences just being there.
As previously written, I was in the process of making my first new recipe for 2015: Bun Cha. I had already marinated the meat and bought the rice noodles. (Luckily the noodles are available here in Legazpi!) So finally time for the actual cooking! I was in a mad rush to prepare the food because my food tasters were hungry : Mart and Pop. So with the aid of my kitchen helpers I set to work to: 1. Shred the carrots with a cheese grater 2. Chop the coriander (which luckily there was stock in Robinsons Supermarket) 3. Pound the peanuts to tiny pieces 4. Cook the noodles (use boiling water and the noodles should be well hydrated/cooked in 10 minutes) 5. Shred the lettuce to bite size pieces 6. Mold the meat and cook in a cast-iron pan 7. Blanche the bean sprouts 8. ASSEMBLE THE MASTERPIECE! Now to commence the final part of the recipe: assembly of the salad. There is no art to how I placed the dish together -- I was too hungry to make it overly designed a-la Master Chef-- but the simple rule of layering all the components apply. I had originally placed the greens, sprinkled a little of the carrots, cucumber and bean sprouts. After which I placed a heaping amount of noodles and topped it off with the pork and more vegetables.
(Our bowls at home are too small to house the entire dish but I tried anyway. In the end we dumped all the contents on the plate to eat with all gusto. ) I then drizzled the dressing on top and the dish was finished! Sweet pork patties, rice noodles, fresh greens A creature of habit, especially when it comes to food, I usually always order a favorite when I'm craving. So whenever we visit Pho Hoa there is always one thing I'll surely get: Vermicelli Salad.
Since there isn't any Pho Hoa's here in Legazpi and I don't get to leave for Manila on a whim, I decided to fulfill New Year Resolution # 4 (experimenting in the kitchen) by learning how to make the salad from scratch. |
Who is sab_adventures?I have always wanted to write. This will now be a creative outlet-- home to all my arts and crafts. So feel free to browse around my everyday adventures. Interests
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