Filipino Cooking for Beginners
We have a mystery guest blogger today … from England, no less! An array of delicious Filipino food cooked in the diaspora Filipino food is known for combining sweet (tamis), sour (asim) and salty (alat) flavours all in one dish. These contrasting flavors create a unique taste and texture. In addition, Filipino cuisine is rather [...]
Picnic in the Diaspora ca 2001
Prof. Dominador Ibarra Ilio, Sr. When my father, a retired professor at the University of the Philippines, a poet and writer, was still alive, he would visit me and my brother here in the US every other year, starting when I was in grad school in Urbana-Champaign and in Chicago where I moved for work. [...]
A Very Merry Christmas Lunch
Well, I didn’t make the noche buena that I had a countdown for in this blog because noche buena is just not celebrated here. (Noche buena or the good night is the midnight repast that Filipino families have on Christmas eve … I don’t know the origin of it, my guess is, people just come [...]
Food trip! A short photo stroll through Ongpin, Manila’s Chinatown
One of the gates to Manila’s Chinatown Tikoy for sale on the sidewalk, are you ready for the Chinese New Year?! Buddha laughing at me! Buseeee restaurant Street scene Exotic fruits
Breakfast in bed
High-end longsilog (longganisa, sinangag at itlog) at the Hotel-Intercontinental in Makati. When I went home to the Philippines last year (2007), instead of staying at the Manila Hotel where we always stay in the past for the requisite overnight stay in Manila before going home to the province, I stayed at the Hotel Intercontinental in [...]
The sari-sari store
The sari-sari store is basically a mom-and-pop general merchandise store present in any neighborhood in the Philippines. Sari-sari is the Philippine word for various or many and different. Thus, the store usually sells different kinds of goods, but mostly basic necessities. It is known as tindahan in Tagalog while in Aklanon, we call them as [...]
Caldereta
Preparing vats of caldereta in the backyard during a fiesta. Caldereta is basically a meat stew, and as the name implies, according to backyard cooks* such as the one in the picture, the original stew would be using goat meat. For some reason, they equate the Visayan term ‘kanding’ (goat) to ‘calde.’ But I suspect [...]
Filipino Flavors – Manila’s Magical, Misunderstood Cuisine – from the Wall Street Journal
These pictures of pancit luglug (top) and fern salad (bottom) appeared on an article called “Filipino Flavors” in the Wall Street Journal’s Food & Drink section on October 3. It is authored by Robyn Eckhardt, a Kuala Lumpur-based writer and photographed by David Hageman. When I saw this, I said to myself, it’s about time, [...]
A Blast from the past: a typical Filipino special occasion in the diaspora
Dateline: January 2001, baptism of my grandnephew, Carlo Delfin in Chicago. Carlo Delfin We had a feast … but this is normal for a Filipino special occasion party in the diaspora. In fact, this is quite a modest party celebration . But this is repeated everywhere and anywhere around the world when ever Filipinos gather [...]
Comfort foods
Today, being the 7th anniversary of 9/11, many of us are longing for comforts that are familiar, especially those that remind us of our happy childhood, to ease a little bit our worries and apprehensions during these uncertain times. We have a cousin who perished in the second tower on that day. You’d think that [...]
‘Tanghon Soup
I really like sotanghon noodles more than any other Filipino noodles used for pancit. Sotanghon is the Filipino term for ‘bean thread noodle’ or ‘glass noodle’ or ‘cellophane noodle.’ It’s basically made of soybeans and the threads become glassine when cooked or soaked in water. I like it (to cook and to eat) as pancit [...]
