Beef Steak Ala Crema

Traditional Bistek Tagalog made more special with Nestle All Purpose Cream

Preparation Time: 5 minutes to prepare plus 20 minutes to marinate
Cooking Time: 25 minutes
Servings: 4-6

Ingredients:

• ½ kg thinly sliced beef sirloin
• 1 8g Maggi magic sarap
• 1 tbsp calamansi juice + 1 tbsp soy sauce
• ¼ cup cooking oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced into rings
• 1 250ml Nestle all purpose cream

Procedure:

1. Rub the beef with Maggi magic sarap, soy sauce and calamansi. Marinate for at least 20 minutes.
2. Heat oil and sauté onions for 2 minutes or until crisp tender. Remove from oil then set aside. Remove In the same oil, pan-fry marinated beef until brown in color.
3. Add fried onions. Pour in Nestle all purpose cream and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

Hinimay na Manok at Mais

An off-shoot of Tinola, this soup uses flaked chicken and another kid's favorite, young corn.

Preparation Time: 00:20
Cooking Time: 00:20
Servings: 6-8

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp. oil
• 1 tbsp. crushed garlic
• 1/4 cup sliced onion
• 300 g. chicken breasts boiled and flaked
• 4 pieces chicken cube dissolved in
• 8 cups water
• 100 g. young corn sliced diagonally 1" long
• pepper to taste
• 1 cup sili leaves

Procedure

1. Heat oil and sauté garlic and onion until golden.
2. Add chicken and pour in broth.
3. Bring to boil then add corn and season with pepper.
4. Blend well and simmer until corn is crisp tender. Add sili leaves and cook for 2 minutes.
5. Serve hot.

Pork Pata, Pechay and Sigarillas Sinigang

Tender pork hocks and green veggies in your old time favorite hearty soup

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 1 hour
Servings: 4 - 6

Ingredients

• 1 ½ liters rice washing or water
• 2 medium tomatoes, sliced
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 1 kg pork pata sliced
• 5 pcs sigarillas, sliced
• 1 sachet 25g Knorr sinigang sa Sampalok Mix
• 2 cups sliced pechay
• 2 pcs siling panigang (finger chilies)
• patis (fish sauce) to taste

Procedure

1. Boil rice washing with tomatoes, onion and pork pata for 1 hour or until pata is tender and beginning to disintegrate from the bone.
2. Add sigarillas and simmer. Stir-in Sinigang sa Sampaloc Mix. Bring to a boil.
3. Add pechay and siling panigang. Season with patis to taste.

No Bake Chocolate Cheesecake

Ingredients:

• 1 ¼ cups chocolate Graham cracker crumbs
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp unflavored gelatin
• ½ cup water
• 1 250g cream cheese
• 1 pack Nestle All Purpose Cream - Chocolate Flavor (250 ml)

Procedure

1. Combine Graham, butter and sugar until crumbly.
   
2. Press mixture into a 9 inch springform pan or into a container of your choice. Set aside.
   
3. Sprinkle gelatin in water. Warm over low hear while stirring constantly. Cook until gelatin dissolves. Remove from heat and let cool.
   
4. Beat cream cheese until light. Add Nestle All Purpose Cream Chocolate Flavor and beat for another 30 seconds.
   
5. Stir in dissolved gelatin. Pour mixture into the prepared crust.
   
6. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours or until set. Serve with coffee or tea.

Rellenong Bangus (Stuffed Milk Fish) Recipe

As you all know, Lenten season was just over. And during this time, I prepared a family favorite, since meat should not be consumed during this period. So, i share with you my recipe:

• 1 big bangus (milkfish)

• 3 cloves of garlic, minced

• 1 onion, chopped

• 2 tomatoes, chopped

• 1 egg

• 1/4 cup lemon juice

• 1 small carrot, finely chopped

• 1/4 cup soy sauce

• 4 tablespoons of cooking oil

• raisins

• cooked peas

• 1/4 cup red bell pepper, chopped
  

• salt and pepper to taste
  

Cooking Instructions:

• Scale and remove the intestines of the bangus.

• With a very sharp knife, slowly remove the meat of the fish from the skin through the opening cavity below the head. Remove the spine by snapping off the bone at the base of the tail and head. Use a long spoon to scrape all the meat from the skin.

• Marinate the head and skin in lemon juice, soy sauce and pepper.

• Boil in 1/2 cup of water the bangus meat with some salt for 5 minutes.

• Sauté the garlic and onions until slightly brown then add the tomatoes and carrots until tender.

• Add the cooked peas, bell pepper and raisins and the bangus meat to the mixture. Cook for an additional 5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

• Add a beaten egg to the sauté and mix well.

• Stuff the mixture inside the bangus skin and head. Sew the cavity if needed.

• Fry in oil until golden brown.

• slice slightly diagonal (1 1/2 inch thick) and serve.

Lenten Season in the Philippines

Both Christian and superstitious traditions mix in remembering the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Many still practice not eating pork/beef during the Lenten season, while others acquire some other forms of penance or fasting. I remember being told by my parents and grandparents not to take a bath/shower on Good Friday, or to be exhuberant in this day of ‘mourning’.

Beginning at noon on Friday, we would see several men naked from the waist up and walking barefoot as they scourge themselves with ropes or bamboo sticks. It’s a form of atonement for their sins, we were told. The pinnacle of this is hanging several men on crosses as a reenactment of Jesus’ crucifixion. All across town, there are dramatizations and reciting of the passion of Christ. All across the nation, the lent is celebrated with fervor and solemnity.

In Manila there is the Visita Iglesias, or the practice of visiting 14 churches and reciting the 14 stations of the cross.

In Marinduque, there is the Moriones Festivals, where people dress up like Roman soldiers to remember the beheading of Longinos. In Sipalay, Negros Occidental, quack doctors go to unexplored caves on Good Friday in search of amulets for healing and power.

Kwek-kwek

This is one of the best street food ever. I had to buy some so I could take a photo of it. I bought this off a food cart inside the grocery, but the truth is, the ones from the street vendors taste waaaaaaaaaaaay better. Possibly because of the exposure to the fumes. ;)

The orange coating is a flour batter mix, with food coloring, I'm sure. It is crispy on some spots and a bit chewy on others. The quail eggs are hardcooked, peeled, dipped in batter and then deep fried.

It comes with a choice of spicy vinegar or sweet sauce or a mix of both. I prefer the sweet sauce, but the stall I got this from didn't have it. They had the store bought (hygienic) sweet and sour sauce. Personally, I like the ones that are brown and murky with fishball in it, from the street vendors.

Also, on the streets, if you buy this, they will fry it for you, but you'll have to be the one to pick it out of the fryer using a barbeque stick.

They normally cost three pesos a piece now.

One piece fills up my entire mouth, enough to keep me from speaking. I like the size of it. When I bite down slowly, there is that tension, where the surface of the egg (with the batter stuck to it) gives in but does not break right away. When it does break, the powdery yolk comes out and mingles with the sauce. And I chew away until the egg is no more.

I can eat eight of these with no problem at all, but I don't do that all the time. Four quail eggs is equal to one chicken egg, but I am not sure about the protein and cholesterol contents, so eat at your own risk. :)

But it is one of the guilty pleasures of a 'bad food' addict like me.