Tokwa at Baboy is a traditional appetizer in most Filipino restaurants and most especially in places offering beer. It is usually made with pork ears, chewy tofu, soy sauce, pork broth, vinegar and other spices. This used to be a favorite dish of my husband but unfortunately, my husband suffers from gouty arthritis and anything high in protein will cause him to suffer stiffness in the joints the following day. Tokwa’t baboy is a favorite of my daughters which she often pairs off with Arroz caldo. I don’t use pig ears for this recipe to make it Tokwa’t Baboy simple to prepare.

Ingredients

1/2 kilo pork (cut into chunk cubes)
6 pieces tokwa or beancurd
2 heads garlic , minced
1/4 teaspoon salt (for pork)
1 cup cane vinegar
1 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt (for sauce)
1 teaspoon brown sugar
3 small onions , diced
2 small pieces chili pepper
Sliced onion rings from 1 onion

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Posted: August 4th, 2009 under Pork, Recipes with 10,494 views.
Comments: 1

I can’t remember where I got this recipe but I think it might have been a TV cooking show with Nora Daza. Oh well, it doesn’t matter how I got the recipe. This recipe is one of the family favorites. The basic shortcake recipe is good for other fillings like Strawberry Shortcake.

If there is no mango available, try canned peaches.

SHORTCAKE:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsps. sugar
3 tsps. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter (1/2 bar)
1 beaten egg
2/3 cup full cream evaporated milk
1 tbsp. vanilla

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Posted: August 2nd, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts with 3,767 views.
Comments: 2

I promised that I’d share Singapore Food recipes from the chefs in Singapore. Now this Chilli Prawn recipe called Sambal Goreng Udang is so simple.

Here is a recipe shared by Singaporean Chef Veni Knight

Ingredients

500gm large prawns, remove heads and veins but leave shells intact
2 tbsp of chilli powder (You can easily buy these at the supermarket)
2 large onions, sliced
Salt to taste
3 tbsp cooking oil

Method
1. Mix prawns with chilli powder
2. Heat oil in the wok
3. Add the prawns and stir on high heat
4. When the prawns have all turned red, stir in the onions
5. Let the onions soften slightly before putting the fire out
6. Serve hot

Posted: July 31st, 2009 under Asian Cuisine, Recipes, Seafood with 927 views.
Comments: 1

Crab Omelet is one my favorite omelet dish. With crab meat available in the groceries, it’s easier to prepare now. My mom used to prepare this by boiling the crabs and flaking the crab meat. The top shell is saved for filling in the crab meat. Anyway, this recipe is just plain crab omelet or tortang alimasag. A very simple dish.

Ingredients

1 cup flaked crab meat (you can buy this at the frozen section of the grocery)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon constarch
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon refined salt
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup shredded onions
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 peeled potatoes, finely diced
1/4 cup shredded celery
5 eggs

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Posted: July 30th, 2009 under Recipes, Seafood with 1,110 views.
Comments: 1

Whenever I go home to my hometown in Cebu, I make it a point to buy Lumpiang Ngohiong. I recently went to Cebu for my 35th High School reunion and the first thing I looked for was the Ngohiong. Well, what is Ngohiong? It looks like kikiam but the taste of ngohiong is excellent. It’s similar to our Lumpia Shanghai except the stuffings are composed of ubod ( heart of the coconut), singkamas , garlic, spring onions, spices and ground pork or shrimps, then seasoned with ngohiong powder. Before frying the individual ngohiong pieces, one dips it in corn starch batter for crispy texture. Ngohiong Powder can be bought at the grocery stores. A common brand is McCormick Chinese Five Spice (Ngo Yong)

Anyway, I was craving for Ngohiong so much that my classmate taught me the basic recipe. I am sure you will just love it as much. You can adjust the proportions to suit your taste.

I have divided the recipe into three parts: the filling, the corn starch batter and lastly the ngohiong sauce. If you can’t find 5-spice powder at the grocery, I have also included the recipe below. The 5-spice powder will prove to be useful for other chinese dishes like siomai so it’s good to make a batch. It’s worth it.

Filling:

Ready made lumpia wrapper (get large size) or you can also use tofu wraps (called tau-pe)

1 kilo ubod, cut in strips
1/4 cup singkamas, cut in strips
3 tbsp ngohiong powder
1 teaspoon garlic
1 onion, minced
1 tbsp 5-spice powder (see recipe below if you can’t find 5 spice powder in the grocery or disregard this and just add 1 more tablespoon ngohiong powder to the filling ingredients)
5 stalks green onions, chopped
1/2 kilo ground pork or you may want to subsitute with shrimps if you are vegetarian
salt, pepper, and soy sauce to your discretion
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Posted: July 29th, 2009 under Pork, Recipes, Vegetables with 2,144 views.
Comments: 7

Ever since Buko Pandan dessert came out a few years ago, it has been a standard dessert fare. I thought I’d try another version without the buko and see if it tastes just as great as its predecessor. Let’s try the Pandan Jelly.

Ingredients

10 leaves of Pandan (Wash thoroughly and twist leaves)
10 cups of water
3 small cans of Cream
1 medium can of Condensed Milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 bars of Green Gulaman
1 3/4 Cups Sugar (adjust for sweetness)
1/2 cup Kaong or nata de coco (optional)

Cherries for topping

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Posted: July 28th, 2009 under Recipes, desserts with 5,952 views.
Comments: 2

Chicken Empanada is a favorite snack and party fare that I can serve hot or cold. I always thought making empanada was difficult but after baking Apple Pie, Empanada is a breeze. Here is an easy empanada recipe that uses baking. The ingredients and procedure includes two parts, the Filling and the pastry shell.

Ingredients

1. Filling

1 medium szied cooked chicken (flaked, cut to small pieces)
1 smal can green peas
4 medium sized potatoes, cubed
1 small can mushrooms, sliced
1/3 carrots, cubed
1 can cream of mushrooms or Chicken soup
1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste
2 large onions thinly sliced and chopped

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Posted: July 27th, 2009 under Recipes, chicken with 18,940 views.
Comments: 5

It was honor to observe a cooking demo from Violet Oon, dubbed as Singapore Food Ambassador. She is one of Singapore’s leading food gurus and is known as much for her cooking as for her opinions on food. She is considered one of the leading authorities on Asian cuisine with a particular emphasis on Peranakan Food. Violet is also a respected cookbook author and food researcher. Her appointment as consultant to the Singapore Food Festival 2009 is particularly meaningful to her as the theme is Peranakan, the culture she belongs to.

Watch the 35 minute video as she demonstrates two recipes: Nonya Bak Chang and Babi Asam. She interspersed her cooking tips as she demonstrated the recipe. The recipe is a bit complicated to cook but you will learn some asian cooking tips just by watching the video. Now if you want to experiment, go ahead. The sweet potato dumplings taste so good.

Cooking Tips

1. Saute with a nice gentle sizzle not too loud sizzle . Chinese stir fry cooking involves high sizzle but not Peranakan.

2. Cook by smell.

3. Most peranakan dishes boil pork, slice it for that even look, then stir fry it

4. When boiling sweet potato, keep water for soup stock

5. Metal masher is better to use for mashing sweet potatoes

6. Don’t put less in a traditional dish. If rich foods are cooked in its right richness, you tend not to eat a lot.

7. This food should not be eaten every day. In the old days, it was eaten once a year.

8, Enjoy food three times a month. Rest of the month, eat plain like steamed fish or plain rice. When you cook for guests, the point is how to impress them. Cook really yummy for guests.

9. Coriander powder is important in Peranakan cooking. Never buy powder form. Toast the coriander in the over oon14for 10 to 15 minutes but stir every 5 minutes. It has to smell cooked but not burned.

10. To prevent spillage on the floor, use a mixing bowl three times the size that that you would need.

11. the smaller the pot the better. Deep fry is about how high the oil is.

12. When eating in a restaurant, feast with your eyes, your smell and lastly, the taste

13. Drain/dry the meat before cooking so that there is no water layer that prevents spices from reaching the meat.

Here are the recipes demonstrated by Violet Oon.

Held to commemorate a hero of ancient China, the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated in Singapore with thousands of pyramid-shaped glutinous rice dumplings and a Dragon Boat Race. The poet Ch’u Yuan drowned himself in protest against injustice and corruption. It is said that rice dumplings were cast into the water to lure fishes away from the body of the martyr. This act is remembered by the eating of “chung”, glutinous rice dumplings.  Dried lotus and pandan leaves flood the markets a few days before the festival on the fifth month of the lunar calendar as the dumplings are wrapped up tightly in these leaves. The steamed glutinous rice encloses a variety of fillings from pork to mushrooms, red beans, chicken, and mung beans.  The Peranakan version isa delicious variation.  In the past, lotus leaves were not as a vailable so Peranakans used the gigantic fragrant pandan leaves to wrap their bak chang. In addition to the traditional ingredients of diced pork, Chinese mushrooms and preserved melon was added to the local recipe by the Baba Chinese.  The new recipe also includes pounded coriander seeds and lots of sugar.

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Posted: July 22nd, 2009 under **Tips, Supplies & Preparation, Asian Cuisine, Recipes with 617 views.
Comments: 2

I hope you will indulge me with a few recipes the next few days. These are Peranakan dishes shared to me by the Singaporean chef in the ongoing Singapore Food Festival. You can read more about my food adventures at Multi-Cultural Gastronomic Experience in Singapore and Opening Day at the Singapore Food Festival. Just to give you a background, Peranakan culture reflects Singapore’s Multi-cultural landscape. Peranakan is a cultural juxtaposition between the Chinese and Malay or Indian and Malay resulting in a colorful and multi-faceted culture from history to costumes and jewelry. Just like us, Filipinos, our food is multi-cultural as well , heavily influenced by the Spanish, Chinese, Malay, Indian, American and many more. This Babi Pongteh recipe reminds me of our local Humba . In Humba, we use salted black beans but in the Babi Pongteh, it is Salted Bean Paste. I got to taste the salted bean paste and it is not as salty as the salted black beans for Humba. Try buying the salted bean paste at your local Chinese grocery stores. Here is the recipe developed by Shirley Tay.

Serves 10

Ingredients
Pork Belly (cut into pieces approx. 5cm) 2kg
Shallots 500g
Garlic 300g
Salted Bean Paste 200g
Dark Soya Sauce for colour
Sugar 100g
Oil 150ml
Water 1½ litres
Chicken Cube 1 no.

Methods:
1. Blend the shallots, garlic and salted bean paste together.
2. Heat up the oil in a pot.
3. When oil is hot, add in the blended mixture of shallots, garlic and salted bean paste and fry until fragrant and slightly golden brown.
5. Then, add in the pork belly and dark soya sauce and continue frying until the pork is evenly coated.
6. Add in enough water just to cover the pork belly and stir in seasoning. Simmer for 1 hour or until the pork is tender.
7. The dish is ready to serve hot with steamed rice.

Note: This is the original recipe of Shirley Tay, a Nyonya chef at the Swissotel Merchant Court.

Posted: July 21st, 2009 under Asian Cuisine, Pork, Recipes with 786 views.
Comments: 2

One of the most popular Peranakan dishes of Swissotel Merchant Court and even Singapore is the Ayam Buah Keluak or Chicken stewed in Black Nuts. This is the traditional and well-known Nonya dish, normally available in restaurants that feature Peranakan cuisine. Its main ingredients are chicken (ayam) and buah keluak. I know some of you might not be able to get the ingredients locally but for those based in Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia you can try this recipe developed by Chef Shirley Tay of Swissotel Merchant Court. I also got to taste this dish and loved the combination of the black nut paste with the chicken. It’s not too salty too.

You can download Shirley Tay’s recipe here.

And if you are in Singapore, you might want to try out the 100 dishes at the Longest Peranakan buffet slated for July 26, 2009.
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Posted: July 20th, 2009 under Asian Cuisine, Recipes, chicken with 468 views.
Comments: none

Tsiju Culinary Arts shared this Singapore Chilli Crab recipe which is one of the most popular dish in Singapore hawker centers. It is sometimes known as Singapore’s unofficial “national dish” which had its humble beginnings in the country itself. In the 1950s, Madam Cher Yam Tian had a hawker stall right on the seashore, and she spent her time everyday from dusk till the wee hours of the morning cooking by the light of a kerosene lamp. One of Madam Cher’s specialities? Live crabs in a zesty chilli-spiked gravy, the first version of the Singapore chilli crab.

The recipe looks simple but I still have to try it. Just substitute the ingredients that I noted in the closed parenthesis.

Ingredients

1 Sri Lanka Crab (of course use our local crabs, the bigger the better)
3 tbsp. Canola oil
8 cloves garlic, chopped
8 fresh chili, chopped
2 eggs
2 spring onions, sliced
1 ginger, grated
2 tablespoon lime juice (or substitute with calamansi or lemon juice)
2 tabsp sugar
4 tbsp ketchup
1 teaspoon cornflour (substitute with corn starch)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Mix the following for the sauce

1 cup water
4 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cornflour
1/4 teaspoon salt

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Posted: July 18th, 2009 under Recipes, Seafood with 2,652 views.
Comments: 3

I will be attending the Singapore Food Festival 2009from July 17 till July 20 thanks to the hospitality of the Singapore Tourism Board. Watch out for recipes and maybe demos on how to prepare some Peranakan cuisine. If you want updates of the Festival, just visit my other food blog at Pinoy Food Photo Blog

(Updated: added the recipe links)

1. Cooking demonstration by Violet Oon on the following:

- Nonya Bak Chang (the filling, the rice, the wrapping) mpling filled with the bak

- Kueh Kledek (fried sweet potato duchang meat stuffing)

- Babi Assam (sour and hot pork stew)

2. Babi Pongteh: Braised Pork with Salted Bean Paste by Shirley Tay

3. Ayam Buah Keluah: Chicken Stewed with Black Nuts by Shirley tay

4. Sambal Goreng Udang (Chilli Prawn)

Posted: July 16th, 2009 under Site News with 582 views.
Comments: 1