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My daughter Lauren was dying to cook paella for our Christmas Eve dinner over 2 years ago. I bought all the ingredients in the morning but I wanted to cook it already while the seafood was still 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, Filipino Style recipe. Lauren assisted me with the cooking.

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Posted: December 30th, 2009 under Beef, Filipino Food, Pork, Recipes, Seafood, chicken.
Comments: 11

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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.
Comments: 4

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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.
Comments: 3

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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.
Comments: 6

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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.
Comments: 5

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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. Today, I will hie off to the grocery to buy ingredients for my fruit salad. Here is my recipe.

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Posted: December 28th, 2008 under Christmas, Filipino Food, Noche Buena, Recipes, desserts.
Comments: 5

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To all the 1600 plus readers and subscribers of Pinoy Food Blog, I am grateful for your visit. I hope you have somehow gotten a few tips from my family’s Food Blog. I am amazed at the growth of this blog and at first I wasn’t that diligent in updating this blog. However, when I saw the growth of subscribers, I paid more attention. It is a good feeling to share old fashion tradition, treasured recipes and tips from me to you.

My family and I would like to wish you all the best of the season whether you celebrate Christmas or not. From our home to your home, I want to spread some cheer through our Noche Buena.
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Posted: December 25th, 2008 under Noche Buena.
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Our Noche Buena is never complete without the hot tsokolate made from the native Tablea (cacao chocolate). I often visited my great grandmother in Cebu and her past time involved making tablea. The fragrant aroma is something that can never replace all those Starbucks frapucciono or chocolate drinks from fancy coffee shops. However, tablea is best prepared using a batirol and a tsokolatera so the consistency is smooth. A batirol is a wooden whisk used to mix tablea (a block of pure cocoa) and water into a thick, grainy, hot chocolate drink. The tablea and water are mixed in a cast-iron pitcher called a tsokolatera. Like a kawali or wok, a tsokolatera (Chocolatera or Chocolate Pot) performs better as it ages.

I made a cup of hot chocolate drink the other day with my trusty helper, Diding. Here is the proportion.
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Posted: December 24th, 2008 under Noche Buena.
Comments: 5

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What do you know? I smell Christmas in the air.

Starting November, watch out for more Holiday Cooking recipes that you can plan for your family and friends. Don’t expect fancy recipes but there will be a few so keep tuned. I will also list a few restaurants that provide noche buena dishes in case you are lazy to cook.

You can start off with a few of my recipes that I’ve cooked for the past years.

Noche Buena Recipes

Pochero
Chinese Ham
Paella
Chicken Relleno
Max Fried Style Chicken Recipe
Pork Barbecue

Embutido
Bam-i, Cebuano Pansit

Western Cuisine

Cheese Fondue
Chicken Cannelloni

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Posted: October 26th, 2008 under Noche Buena.
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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

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Posted: December 20th, 2007 under Christmas, Filipino Restaurants, Noche Buena.
Comments: 2

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That’s me and my family in last year’s Christmas Eve Noche Buena. I am sure a lot of you are planning your noche buena dishes for Christmas and New Year. That’s why you are here. I have my black book of recipes that serve as my recipe resources. I like to do a lot of preparation just before the actual cooking so I don’t get stressed out. Here are a few recipes that I have cooked in the past. Some don’t have photos yet because years ago, I didn’t think I’d put them in a food blog. This page will be updated often so bookmark this page for the rest of December.

There are Holiday Cooking Ideas and recipes and also places to buy if you don’t want to bother cooking or baking:

Noche Buena Recipes

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Posted: December 9th, 2007 under Noche Buena.
Comments: 1