Nilagang Baka

The geographical location of the country results in high temperature especially during the months of March to May. However, Filipinos have the ability to easily adapt to their environment resulting into different Filipino drinks made from fresh tropical fruits. These drinks are easy to prepare ranging from hot, chilled, and alcoholic to non-alcoholic mixed with your fancied tropical fruits.

Traditional Filipino Breakfast food

Aside from being popularly known as warm and hospitable, Filipinos are known to have a sweet tooth. In fact, Filipinos have a wide variety of “kakanin” and desserts—rice cakes, cochenta, maize and many more. Most of these sweet foods are made from local fruits and crops grown in backyards.

Pansit Canton Guisado

Cooking is a skill. Likewise, it requires patience to learn the techniques to come up with a good cooking output. Also, it does not require formal education to be able to cook but a passion and willingness to learn. With proper sources of recipes, cooking is easy and simple as you can imagine.

Appetizer Sampler - Chicken Wings, Lumpia, Calamari Rings, Tortilla Chips & Sweet Potato Fries

There are many websites that offer recipes. However, this website concentrates in giving recipes of your favourite Filipino foods and drinks, tasty and mouth watering. These recipes will help you prepare Filipino dishes from simple to adaptations of international cuisines. As you browse the pages, you will find recipes that are easy to prepare with ingredients that are widely available in supermarkets or made from left-over food. Aside from the savings you get by cooking at home, you will also get the assurance that the foods prepared are clean and fresh

Basic Cooking tips...

The following fifteen is just a tiny handful of the many basic

cooking tips that you could integrate into your everyday life to save
time and money.

• Bacon: Reduce shrinkage by running cold water over it before frying.

• Beans: Stop gas attacks by adding a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda in a big pot of beans while they are soaking.

• Boiled Eggs: Add some vinegar or a little salt to the boiling
water when boiling eggs. This basic cooking tips will keep the egg in
the shell if it cracks.

• Ripening Fruits and Vegetables: Put your unripe fruit and
vegetables in a brown paper bag and place the bag in a dark cupboard
for few day. Using this basic cooking tips is an excellent way to save
money on fruits and vegetables that has to be ripened.

• Salads: Cut your iceberg lettuce into wedges instead of tearing salad greens to save some time making a salad.

• Spaghetti Sauce: Add a small pinch of bicarbonate of soda to your spaghetti sauce to lower the acid taste from the tomatoes.

• Corn: Place the corn directly into boiling water, and do not add
salt. Do not boil corn for more than three minutes. Overcooking reduces
the taste level.

• Frozen Vegetables: When they are stuck together, simply run boiling water over them.

• Grating Cheese: Freeze for twenty five minutes before grating. It will shred so much easier.

• Pancakes: Use a small amount of sugar in the batter and they will brown more quickly.

• Pie Pastry: Substitute one teaspoon of vinegar for one teaspoon
of the cold water called for in the recipe and the pastry will be much
flakier.

• Quick Sauces: Use condensed cream soups such as cream of
mushroom, cream of chicken, cream of tomato, cream of celery, to make
fast and easy sauces.

• Quick Tenderizer: Use vinegar as a meat tenderizer. Add a
tablespoon to water when boiling meat or ribs for stews. This basic
cooking tips will help tenderizer even the toughest meat.

• Wilted vegetables: Soak wilted veggies in two cups water, one tablespoon vinegar to help bring them back to life.

• Wooden Skewers: Soak all your wooden skewers in cold water for twenty minutes to prevent them from burning.

Inspiration
could be considered to be one of the key ingredients to writing. Only
if one is inspired, can one get to writing on any subject especially
like cooking.

Use some of these basic cooking tips to make your life in the kitchen more enjoyable.

lechon baboy in the making!!

Italian Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs

Ingredients:
MEATBALLS
1 pound lean ground beef
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1 egg, beaten

SAUCE
3/4 cup chopped onion
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 (28 ounce) cans whole peeled tomatoes
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 bay leaf
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
3/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions:
1. In a large bowl, combine ground beef, bread crumbs, parsley,
Parmesan, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, garlic powder and beaten egg.
Mix well and form into 12 balls. Store, covered, in refrigerator
until needed.
2. In a large saucepan over medium heat, saute onion and garlic in
olive oil until onion is translucent. Stir in tomatoes, salt, sugar
and bay leaf. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 90 minutes.
Stir in tomato paste, basil, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and meatballs and
simmer 30 minutes more. Serve.

Cheesy Potato and Corn Chowder

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 tablespoons margarine
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
• 3 cups peeled and cubed potatoes
• 1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn
• 1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles
• 1 (2.5 ounce) package country style gravy mix
• 2 cups milk
• 1 cup shredded Mexican-style processed cheese food

DIRECTIONS:

1. In large saucepan, melt margarine over medium high heat. Add celery and onion; cook and stir until tender, about 5 minutes.
2. Add chicken broth; bring to a boil. Add potatoes; cook over low heat for 20 to 25 minutes or until potatoes are soft, stirring occasionally.
3. Stir in corn and chiles; return to boiling. Dissolve gravy mix in milk; stir into boiling mixture. Add cheese; cook and stir over low heat until cheese is melted.

lumpia shanghai

In Filipino, lumpia are eggrolls that are deep-fried like a wrapped stick of meat. Lumpia is a spring roll filled with ground or finely mince of pork, beef or vegetables then served it with sweet and sour sauce. Sometimes I call this recipe lumpia shanghai.

This lumpia recipe or lumpia shanghai is one of the filipino recipes that I usually make, whenever we have a party or get together with friends, especially filipino friends, at home. One time, I was busy cooking filipino recipes, and one of them is this lumpia and my friend arrive early and help me in the kitchen. She notices that I my lumpia wrapper won’t stick together whenever I cook. I’ve tried everything from water, to egg wash and other type of paste but still no avail, the wrapper still broke loose.

Since she is also a good cook; she gave me the technique in making these wrapper sticks together. And guess what she told me, just used the egg white as a paste in binding this wrapper together. And it works! Since then, my filipino lumpia shanghai servings looks better and taste good.

Thank you Carmelita for the great tip!

Ingredients :

· 1 lb. ground pork
· 1 cup chopped shrimps
· 1/4 cup finely chopped onions
· 1/2 cup finely chopped carrots
· 2 whole eggs
· 3 tbsp. soy sauce
· 3 dashes of sesame oil
· salt and pepper, to taste

· lumpia wrapper
· vegetable oil, for frying

(Cooking Conversion Chart)

Cooking Procedures :

1. In a bowl, combine all ingredients. Mix until well blended.

2. Wrap into thin rolls in lumpia wrapper. Fry in deep hot oil.

3. Drain on paper towels. Transfer to a serving platter. Serve with your favorite catsup or make your own Sweet and Sour Sauce recipe.

Pakbet

• 1/4 kilo pork with fat, cut into small pieces

• 2 Amapalya (bitter melons) sliced to bite size pieces

• 2 eggplants, sliced to bite size pieces

• 5 pieces of okra, cut in two

• 1 head garlic, minced

• 2 onions, diced

• 5 tomatoes, sliced

• 1 tablespoon of ginger, crushed and sliced

• 4 tablespoons bagoong isda or bagoong alamang

• 3 tablespoons of oil

• 1 1/2 cup water

• Salt and pepper to taste

Pakbet Cooking Instructions:

• In a cooking pan, heat oil and fry the pork until brown, remove the pork from the pan and set aside.

• On the same pan, saute garlic, onion, ginger and tomatoes.

• In a casserole, boil water and add bagoong.

• Add the pork in the casserole and mix in the sautéed garlic, onion, ginger and tomatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

• Add in all the vegetables and cook until the vegetables are done, careful not to overcook.

• Salt and pepper to taste.

• Serve hot with plain rice.