The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

Vinegar-stewed catfish
Today we post our entries for the second edition of Lasang Pinoy, the Filipino food blogging event. Our month’s host is Celia Kusinera at English Patis with the theme Cooking Up a Storm! It’s a very fitting topic since normally, September is towards the end of the monsoon season. With drastic climatic shifts however, it seems like typhoons are now intermittent occurences, unlike in recent years when we were able to distinguish a period when they were most frequent.Time was when the opening of classes coincided with the rainy season. A few weeks into the school year, chances were classes would be called off due to typhoons. The storms would range from mild to very strong, from Signal No. 1-3, before Signal No. 4 was added to the system very recently.

I loved the onset of the rainy season. Not too long after the showers started, the stream beside our house would be flowing more rapidly and we’d float our paper boats. Rains also meant playing and taking a bath in the rain, watching the mamadúas on the bridge over the stream. A padúas is a short bamboo fishing pole, mamadúas is both the verb, act of fishing, and the noun the person(s) fishing.
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Having spent my childhood in the province and in Pampanga at that, I took for granted that everyone knew how to cook. It seemed to me that it was something instinctive, something naturally learnt, like speaking. In our family, even those who were not considered excellent cooks had very passable culinary skills. And even then, they also had excellent taste in food. My grandfather was probably one of them.

My maternal grandmother would always tell us stories about our grandfather’s slapdash cooking skills albeit in jest. One incident was when he was left at home with their very young children. Lola laughingly related how she was still on the street in front of the house when her children regaled her with how Lolo dropped a live fish into a boiling pot of soup. Lolo was also extravagant with spices, and I probably took after him, based on the number of times I was reprimanded for using a lot of cloves, oregano and laurel. Fortunately for Lola, I was born after my grandfather passed away, otherwise she’d have run out of spices very often.

Aside from Lolo’s more down-to-earth cooking and his penchant for spices, he also loved to replicate dishes they had in expensive restaurants. He also experimented with original recipes. Below is one of them, which he called lutong Bombay, perhaps due to its curry-like flavour. Our clan never tires of this recipe. It is very simple to cook and most of the ingredients are usually available in any pantry.

Chicken, being the versatile meat that it is, soaks up the flavour of the spices. Garlic and ginger compliment each other, and gives it the decidedly Oriental aroma even from afar. The tomatoes lend some sourness that balance the hot-spicy flavour of ginger and garlic while the potato gives the sauce some body, even as it absorbs the flavours of the other ingredients.
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Note: I am in the process of refining this post. The original recipe was the shortcut version, which was meant for my friends abroad. Now and then I modify it to reflect the original recipe we use at home.

This week and most of next will be very busy for me. Since I’ll be offline, I’m leaving two recipes, those I owe Catsudon and Svelte Rogue. I’m amused at how I do this even on my blog, for this is also how I am in real life. If I have to go somewhere for at least three days, I try to fill up the refrigerator as much as I can for those I leave at home. Oh, the habits that mark our lives!

And so we proceed. Both are meat recipes. I’m not including a vegetable recipe here because both dishes are best served with a fresh green salad, or at least with slices of cucumber and carrots. When proportions are not written, it means you can use as much or as little as you want. So goes the sensual cook!
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The next dish is something I cooked as an experiment a few years back. It has always been a hit during parties and when my friends ask for the recipe, I invariably call it by two names – Chicken in Mushroom Sauce or Chicken in Honey.

Chicken can be bought from the butcher or meat shop in strips. Make sure these are neatly sliced and of the same size, so they cook evenly and remain juicy. Ask to have the skin separated from the flesh and also ask for the bones. Boiled skin and bones (Svelty, when I say boiled for broth it means you add a pinch of salt, peppercorns and some herbs like bay leaves) can be the base for chicken broth. Kept frozen in a container, it can be kept for two weeks.

Chicken Strips in Mushroom Sauce :chickenrun:

½ kg. skinless and boneless chicken strips
1 cup sliced fresh button mushrooms or 1 large can
1 fresh green chilli (anything mild, like the sili we use for sinigang – Svelty, omit this if Mikka’s eating)
1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce
2-3 tablespoons honey
1 ½ tablespoons dry sherry or 1 tablespoon red wine (optional)
2 teaspoons corn flour or corn starch
2 tablespoons virgin olive oil
50 g. cashew nuts

1. If using whole chicken, slice it into thin, even strips.
2. De-seed and slice the chilli into fine rings.
3. Combine the soy sauce, honey and sherry together in a bowl then mix the corn flour with 3 tablespoons of water until smooth, then add to the mixture.
4. Heat half the oil in a wok or frying pan over low heat and brown cashews evenly. Remove from pan.
5. Add the remaining oil to the wok and increase to a high heat.
6. Add the chicken, mushrooms and chilli and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes until sealed on all sides.
7. Add the sauce to the pan and stir over a medium heat until the chicken is evenly glazed and the sauce is thickened.
8. Add the cashew nuts and serve at once.

Bon appetit!

P.S. Bea, next time you’ll have a recipe to yourself, all your own. :frog: :blooms:

Sorry Minnette, I was so successful in avoiding your food blog, I totally forgot to mention it in a previous entry. I made the necessary correction.

To those who don’t know, I am an avid reader of food blogs, which definitely include Minnette’s. However, I only read Lafang List once or twice a week if I can help it because it’s detrimental to my diet. What makes it different from the other food blogs and so bad is that Minnette can make even instant, if not junk food, seem so enticing! Imagine my stomach grumbling after reading her entry on instant noodles and I think it was just after lunch!

Anyway, here’s my first instalment on requested recipes. As Lars and I were chatting last night, it struck me how enthusiastic she was about learning how to cook. It was almost like the joy of a child! However, there were things I took for granted and were misinterpreted by the novice cook, e.g. the raw onion in mashed potatoes almost-catastrophe, hehehe!

So, in an attempt to make life easier for dear Svelty, I’ll simplify the first recipe. It’s almost child’s play and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. When I gave similar instructions for a friend who was taking his fellowship in Bonn, I told him I won’t include my usual complicated instructions in proportioning spices according to the senses, though I believe those are essential in achieving the right balance to taste. The proportions I indicated in the recipe are just approximations of the average. Personally I am very extravagant with the use of spices. If there are no measurements specified, it means one can use as much as wished. Therefore, dear Svelty the experimenter, use your own judgement. If at first attempt, it doesn’t taste the way you want it, then good luck next try!

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