New Year’s Eve noche buena must have a fruit salad on the dinner table. The most popular fruit salad is the Buko salad. The popularity of fruits during New Year’s Eve celebration is part of the tradition to bring in good luck, fortune and prosperity.
Archives for Christmas category
If you’re inviting over a large number of family members and friends for Christmas dinner and have no time to prepare all that food for them, consider ordering an entire lechon paella. Lechon paella is a succulent, roasted, boneless young pig stuffed with hot, seafood paella, make the whole fare a meal in itself. The whole lechon can feed a group of about twenty people with healthy appetites and you might even have some left over for paksiw.
You suddenly find that your holiday dishes are not enough for your guests. What do you do? Cooking can be stressful especially if one is faced with a lot of visitors. The thing to do is to order your Holiday dishes from reliable restaurants. Here are a few ideas of traditional Noche Buena dishes from Mario’s Restaurant:
- Embutido at 975 pesos
- Chicken Relleno at 1,100 pesos
- Chicken Galantina at 1,275 pesos
- Pastel de Lengua at 1,800 pesos
- Cochinillo at 1,250 pesos a kilo
- Paella Valenciana at 1,500 pesos
Puto Bumbong from Via Mare
This is the almost perfect puto bumbong you can ever eat in an urban center. And you can order two pieces at 67 pesos at any Via Mare Restaurant. After a stressful shopping spree at Landmark Makati, I chose to rest at the Via Mare on the second floor right beside the ladies bag section. I was thrilled that they offered Puto Bumbong. I forgot how puto bumbong tasted like after my horrifying experience with the Puto bumbong vendor at the church grounds. Before I talk about Puto bumbong of Via Mare, allow me to share how some commercial puto bumbong vendors “cheat” us out of the real puto bumbong experience. Here is the puto bumbong which I bought for 20 pesos from the vendor after the misa de gallo.
The Gingerbread House is an impressive centerpiece in the noche buena table. The attractive candy colors will surely delight anyone of all ages and serve as a conversation piece. This particular Gingerbread house is made by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Christmas Tradition. The Gingerbread house is made with chocolate and royal icing. My friend, Reggie sells it at her online shopping site at Regalo Service for $87.00 (approx. PHP 3,741.00)
Place your Gingerbread House orders here.
Now if you want to make your own Gingerbread House, I found this Gingerbread House dough recipe and the steps in assembling the house.
It’s December 16 and the first day of the Misa de Gallo. For nine consecutive early mornings before Christmas Day, Catholic Churches throughout the Philippines ring their bells around 3 am to invite the faithful to worship and announce the start of this holiday custom. After the mass, the parishoners including myself headed off to the Puto Bumbong stand where it was sold for 20 pesos per pack.
A childhood memory that never fails to remind me of the Christmas season is Fruitcake. I used to bake a lot of fruitcake in the past but the girls never really got around to acquiring a taste for it. They preferred the Gingerbread Man Cookies because of the story behind it after I bake the first batch. That’s my then 16 year old daughter, Lauren when she helped me with my fruitcakes a few years ago. I don’t plan to bake it this year but maybe next year. For those of you who want to bake Fruitcakes for the Holidays, here is a recipe which I call Golden Fruitcake. I’ve modified this based from my mom’s original fruitcake recipe. My Golden Fruitcake does not have a strong taste of brandy nor is it too sweet. Anyway, there’s a lot of preparation so make sure you run down the list carefully.
Here is my Golden Fruitcake recipe
