Noche Buena is never complete without the traditional chinese Ham. I always choose Majestic Ham because it isn’t too salty for me. The secret to their moist, mouthwatering ham products is in their curing process. Their hams are cured in oak barrels, aged for full flavor, and seasoned with select spices before being cooked to perfection. It’s my preference, of course especially since they are so established with 70 years of curing and cooking ham to perfection under their belt.

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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Posted: December 25th, 2009 under Filipino Food, Noche Buena with 28,785 views.
Comments: 4

My memories of Suman Luya dates back to Christmas Eve and my mother. She would cook the sticky rice in a big kawali in the dirty kitchen. Suman Luya is extremely smooth tasting with the right amount of sweetness. It’s perfect for hot chocolate drink during the noche buena. The taste in itself reminds me of Christmas in Cebu.

Here is the recipe of Suman Luya (Suman Flavored with Ginger) or you can buy Suman Luya from this entry Where to Buy Suman in Manila

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Posted: December 24th, 2009 under Recipes, kakanin with 8,995 views.
Comments: 5

Today is the day before Christmas eve or the noche buena. Before I share this recipe, let me greet you my valuable readers for being part of my simple food dishes. Here is my greeting card to all of you.

I created a video greeting for all of you and to share our Christmas through the years in three different homes, starting in Pasig, then Makati then back to Pasig. Lauren was 12 while Marielle was 11 years old with another girl and 2 boys from the Manila Children Choir. The choir conductor chose only 5 children for this recording but with recent technology, it sounds like they are a big group of kids.

The card template is a bit off-tangent with the music but it’s cute. Pasko na Sinta ko is actually a love song but the melody is very poignant.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the kitchen of the Dado family to your kitchen.

My daughter hosted the Man Blog Christmas party at our house last year and she decided to prepare fiesta ham so it would really feel like a Christmas dinner. She didn’t want to use the pre-packaged sauce that came with the ham so she looked around the Internet for a simple ham sauce recipe she can make on my own. Eventually, she came across a recipe for a beer sauce that she modified a little bit. The beer sauce turned out to be a huge hit among her friends. By the time the party was wrapping up, the ham was completely gone – pineapple garnish, sauce and all!

She still needs to make a couple of adjustments to the recipe; I think it needs more sugar and more beer. But this is the beer sauce recipeshe used for the Christmas party.

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Posted: December 23rd, 2009 under Noche Buena with 16,327 views.
Comments: 3

*Wendy Gaynor’s ‘Perfect’ Chocolate Chunk Cookies

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 cups semisweet chunks (preferably imported).

1. Place the butter in a large bowl and cream at high speed until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy, about 4
minutes, scraping down sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until completely mixed.

2. In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking soda. Add to the butter mixture at low speed until just combined and add vanilla extract. Beat on medium speed, scraping bowl down, until blended. Do not overmix.

3. Add chocolate chunks and mix till thoroughly combined. Refrigerate batter until cold, preferably overnight.

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Posted: December 20th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Chocolates & Candies with 20,305 views.
Comments: 9

Yesterday, I got invited by a friend to attend the Sarap at Home, a cooking show at QTV 11 and a cooking demo by Chef Nino Logarta. I found it interesting because I love tuna and I know some of you like easy to cook recipes once in a while.

TUNA CANAPES

Ingredients:

1 can San Marino Corned Tuna
10-12 pcs wonton wrappers
5-6 pcs grapes, halved lengthwise
Cayenne pepper
Salt
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup cream chese
1 1/2 tbsb chopped chives

Procedure:

1) Dust wonton wrapper with cayenne pepper and fry until golden brown, Season with salt right after cooking.
2) Whip cream cheese until soft
3) Mix cream cheese, cream and chives with San Marino Corned Tuna
4) Spoon tuna mixture on fried wontons and add 1/2 a grape to each canape
5) Garnish with extra chopped chives

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Posted: December 18th, 2009 under Recipes, Seafood with 7,316 views.
Comments: 2

I associate Chocolate Crinkles with Christmas gift giving. These cookies have an attractive light and dark contrast perfect for an interesting addition to a cookie tray or for serving by themselves, any time of year! This year, I decided to bake Chocolate Crinkles with our native tsokalate , the tablea (Chocolate Tablets). Growing up in Cebu, the tsokalate drink is the standard drink on our noche buena. You can just imagine the tsokolate aroma as you bite each cookie.

The original recipe used for Chocolate Crinkles is based on Betty Crocker, mom’s favorite recipe book. I replaced the oil with lard as it is much easier to manipulate. Hope you enjoy baking this easy recipe.
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Posted: December 16th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Chocolate with 9,550 views.
Comments: 6

Baking sugar cookies are not my cup of tea. It’s labor intensive. I’d rather bake bar cookies because they are so much easier. You dump all the dry, wet, mix and voila, one gets a yummy cookie. Not with sugar cookies. Whenever I bake sugar cookies, my kids know it’s a labor of love. It’s the love that makes me continue on with this tradition even if they are now adult children. Let me share with you the Christmas Sugar cookies that have been a continuing Christmas tradition for the past twenty years in my family. You can even prepare sugar cookies weeks ahead before you give them to your friends and relatives. Just store them in a cool, dry container.

If you are located in Manila, Philippines, you don’t have to go far to Divisoria to buy your ingredients. You can purchase at Chocolate Lover.

NOTE: The Christmas Sugar Cookie recipe can be used only for your personal use and cannot be posted in your website, blog or any other site, form or means without my WRITTEN permission

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Posted: December 10th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, Christmas with 4,904 views.
Comments: 4

Every Christmas season, I bake “Gingerbread Men Cookies” for my children. Even if they are much older now, the memories and the aroma of molasses, cinnamon and other spices give them a warm cozy feeling. It’s one reason that I’ve continued this tradition year after year. I will share this recipe with you if you want to bake it too.

This recipe is modified for a tropical climate. The original recipe requires immediate rolling after the dough has been made but our tropical heat just makes it gooey to handle.

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Posted: December 9th, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, Celebrations with 8,304 views.
Comments: 9

It’s that time of the year when I plan the baked goodies that I plan to give as gifts to my friends. Food for the Gods is such a delightful recipe to bake during the holidays when one doesn’t have the time to bake Fruit Cake. It entails less preparation and baking time. It’s the perfect dessert to prepare beforehand. Baked with a delightful blend of dates and walnuts, molasses, tinge of brandy and cinnamon, the taste is reminiscent of fruit cake sans the fruit glaze. You should try it. It’s simple to bake. Your kitchen will also emit holiday aroma that gives you more reason to keep baking and baking.

Here is my recipe to start you off baking a dessert fit even for gods.

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Posted: December 2nd, 2009 under Baking Recipes, Cakes, Pastries & Desserts, desserts with 27,070 views.
Comments: 13

Processed Ham these days are very expensive but you can surely prepare your very own Sweet Ham for Noche Buena. Here is a Sweet Ham recipe that has been tested many times in our kitchen. Though it is not free of preservatives, it uses very small doses of salitre. It tastes really good with the Pineapple Sauce, recipe is shown below the Sweet Ham preparation.

Ingredients

3 kilos (pigue or hita) pig’s leg without the bones; select one with the skin and fat intact
9 Tbsps sugar
8 tbsps salt
1-1/2 tsps msg or vetsin
2 tsps prague powder (instead of saltpeter or salitre) – In Manila, you can probably buy salitre at Chocolate Lover, a supplier of baking and cooking supplies

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Posted: November 29th, 2009 under Noche Buena, Pork, Recipes with 15,121 views.
Comments: 6

I have shared my own Humba Recipe at the request of a father who wanted to cook for his kids. This time let me share a recipe cooked by my sister, Lorna in Chicago which she calls Lorna’s Humba- Pig Hocks as Comfort Food. I bet my sister is missing the Philippine so much like some of you, my dear readers.

This is not the traditional Humba recipe that mothers from the Visayas region of the Philippines teach their children. I’ve taken the influences from Filipino, Chinese, Indian, and American home kitchens to create my own version of this braised Humba that can take two to four hours’ cooking time. Of course, if you use a pressure cooker, the fragrant Humba cooks in half the time. If it’s a slow cooker you’re using, an overnight process is just as delicious.

Finding the right meat, and I don’t mean pork belly either, meant going to my neighborhood Polish deli, Deli 4 U, across the street from my suburban home in Illinois — and enjoying the thick, succulent slabs of not-very-fattening but definitely gelatinous pig hocks. Should I say I am in Pig Heaven? Since there were no dried Azucena flowers (tuberoses) available as a garnish, I used dried lily flowers, an extremely delectable substitute from San Francisco’s Chinatown.

According to MonsterGuide.net: “Pork hocks are also called pork shanks, Schweinshaxe, or Eisbein. Pork hocks are sliced from the hind leg or pork foreleg between the knee and the ankle. This is a tough meat as it is a part of a “work” muscle, but it is very tasty though not tender. Although not as popular as pork ribs, it is still a well-liked meat. Pork hocks, and pork in general, are available as natural, or organic, meat.”

Before we start, let’s review the term, “bouquet gaarni,” a remnant from my B.S. Hotel and Restaurant Administration college days at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

BOUQUET GAARNI: A bundle of spices and herbs, the aromatics, are placed in a square of muslin cloth and tied together with butcher twine (”lambo”). I use a muslin bag sachet normally used for tea and I fill it up with my aromatics. If you don’t have any of the above but you have a tea strainer, you can use this, too.

I prefer using a bouquet gaarni instead of mixing the aromatics with the pig hocks because I don’t like biting into peppercorns or cardamon seeds. The bouquet gaarni is braised with the rest of the ingredients and is removed before eating.

Bon Appetit!
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Posted: November 23rd, 2009 under Pork, Recipes with 2,334 views.
Comments: none

What do we do with leftovers from Christmas dinner? Most especially scrap ham. My favorite is Majestic Ham. The solution….Pochero or cocido. I prefer to call it Pochero as it is a very common dish in my hometown Cebu.

Pochero (Spanish spelling , Puchero) with its bounty of meats, sausages and vegetables is known as the “real national dish of Spain. Brought to the shores through the Spanish conquistadores, it is a favorite dish at Filipino festive occasions. With extra ham from the noche buena, the pochero is one way of recycling left-over meats. This recipe is richly flavored by the ham bones and scrap ham simmered with the beef.

Ingredients

1 kilo cubed beef (with some portions of fat)
1/2 kilo leftover ham bones
1/4 kilo scrap ham
8 to 10 cups water or enough to cover meat
4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut in half
4 Saba bananas, peeled, sliced in half
3 pieces chorizo de bilbao sliced diagonally into 2 inch pieces
1 cup chick peas
1 head of cabbage quartered
1 Baguio pechay leaves separated

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Posted: November 20th, 2009 under Noche Buena, chicken with 15,702 views.
Comments: 5