MARIO’S Quezon City, one of Metro Manila’s most respected restaurants, offers a wide selection of delicious breakfast staples. To further enhance one’s dining experience, Mario’s is now powered with Wi-Fi, granting diners access to information and entertainment online.
Visitors can look forward to signature breakfasts like Mario’s Grand Slam, a popular breakfast composed of two eggs, lean bacon, fresh country sausage and light, fluffy pancakes served with butter and maple syrup. Also, a Millennium Platter, which is a combination of any two of the following: Danggit, Daing na Bangus and Chicken-Pork Adobo or Vigan Longganisa, served with garlic rice and grilled tomato.
Batangas Beef
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Sinigang is a Filipino soup dish with a tamarind base which is well known for its sour taste and the variety of ingredients that you can put in it. The dish often incorporates fish (bangus), pork, shrimp, or beef, along with vegetables like string beans, kangkong, okra, pepper, radish, and kamatis (tomato). Sinigang has always been a childhood favorite and is still one of those dishes that can make my mouth water upon merely hearing its name. For some reason, I can’t stand the taste of shrimp sinigang or sinigang na bangus; my favorite kind is beef sinigang though pork sinigang is good too.
The best kind of sinigang is one that’s mouth-curdling sour but with the right amount of salt and spiciness. I attempted to make beef sinigang a couple of months ago and I’ve yet to achieve the precise flavor I love in my sinigang. But here’s the recipe I used if you’d like to give cooking sinigang a shot:
INGREDIENTS
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 onion
6 medium-sized tomatoes
1 tbps patis
1 kilo beef, cut in serving pieces
6 cups water
3 cups kangkong leaves
2 pieces long sili
1 1/2 tsps salt
3 cups crushed tamarind
1 pc tamarind broth cube (optional)
Saute the garlic in cooking oil until golden brown. Add onions and cook until they become transparent. Toss in the tomatoes and the tamarind, then add the patis. Put in the beef and cook covered for five minutes. Pour in the rice water and cover tightly. Let boil. As soon as it boils, reduce the heat and simmer until beef becomes tender. Put in the kangkong and sili then season with salt.
One of the best tasting kare-kare in town can be eaten at Serye aside from Barrio Fiesta. Right after visiting my son’s grave at Loyola Memorial (in Paranaque), we went to visit Serye located just nearby. I was just expecting to take a snack but my daughter wanted kare-kare.
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Noche Buena is never complete without the traditional chinese Ham. The common glaze used is pineapple but this time, I used Apple-cinnamon glaze.
Here’s the recipe for Chinese Ham with Apple Cinnamon Glaze:
Ingredients
1 2 to 3 kilos Chinese Cooked Ham
2 cups Apple Juice
1/4 cup cherry brandy
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 medium apple , chopped
2 pieces bay leaf
1 tsp cinnamon powder
slices of green and red cherries
toasted cashew nuts
celery leaves
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It’s Christmas Eve. My daughter Lauren was dying to cook paella for our Christmas Eve dinner. I bought all the ingredients in the morning but I wanted to cook it already while the seafood were fresh. My recipe for paella is one where I can pre-cook everything and place it on the pyrex dish for baking at a later time. It made sense to prepare it now then bake it just before Christmas dinner. I can’t be hassled with cooking just before the Noche Buena.
Here is my Paella recipe. Lauren assisted me with the cooking.
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Technorati Tags: Paella
The first time I ever ate Ilocano empanada was at the Tiendesitas. The thin crust color is almost bright yellow-orange. The dough used to enclose the filling is thin and crisp, mostly because Ilocano empanada is deep-fried rather than baked. My daughters loved it even if there was some veggies inside the filling. The next time I ate this was at the Salcedo Saturday Market. When you eat the Ilocano empanada, the filling is special as it contains grated papaya, with a little ground meat from Ilocano longganisa. Dipping the empanada with red chili and vinegar is something to die for.
If you want to know how to make this kind of empanada, here is an Ilocano Empanada recipe
Here is a close-up view of the Ilocano Empanada
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Pork Siomai (steamed pork dumplings) dimsum bites taste yummy with chili garlic sauce and kalamansi (Philippine lemon). Siomai is a dimsum of Chinese origin which is also quite common in the Philippines. I found this siomai stand at BC Buddies Dimsum Kitchen at the “Fil-negosyo” expo where the exhibitors showed off their products that you can go into business. I forgot how much it cost but I know they also offer siomai, wanton, shrimp dumpling, pork triangle puff, crab meat roll, pork siap, hakaw (shrimp puff), siopao, sharksfin dumpling, shrimp roll and more. The good thing is one doesn’t have to mae them. But how long is the shelf life? It’s kind of scary to hold so much inventory. But yes, the siomai was yummy except I find the “yellowish” wrapper quite unnatural.
