8 days and counting... then we'll be home in glorious Philippines (uhm... that's glorious, not Gloria's... duh)... home to people, scents, sights and flavors we grew up with and missing so much.
How is it?... when you think of something tapos konek-konek na siya sa iba't-ibang bagay?... Like when I think of Christmas... I have a sense of cold air, lights, activities, colors and food. Christmas and food... makes sense to me (Nescafe, pahiram ng linya ha... hehehe). I'm writing this and I'm listening to 'Buloy' by Eraserheads and my butt's still painful from my fall two days ago (alang connection, as is where is lang). Jay said he nearly slipped himself the other day. Maybe I better lighten up on the cleaning.... tee hee :)
Anyway... food. We always have the usual... spaghetti, pancit molo, ubeng halaya (yam), fruit salad, embutido, morcon, ham, queso de bola, stuffed chicken (served only on Christmas eve or Christmas lunch cause bawal daw pag new year... lilipad ang suwerte... hehehe), potato salad. Nowadays the morcon has been replaced with lengua (probably my mom's best dish ever) and the stuffed chicken has become an occasional thing.
I remember cooking with my mom for the holidays. We all had to help. Ate Lani would usually be in charge of scraping buko for the fruit salad, Kuya El or Diko Jun would take turns stirring the ube and Darlene would be in charge of grating the cheese for the spaghetti and fruit salad and Daddy would be the watchdog... an eye out for whoever's not doing his share... hehehe. My job was the fussy and tiresome task of beating Nestle cream for the fruit salad. You wouldn't believe how my mom wanted it done... I had to beat it for hours... by hand cause she doesn't believe in electric beaters... until it was thick enough. Like, how thick is it supposed to get?... it's cream, isn't it?
My mom is by nature a fussy cooker (What's wrong with that?... gardener, butler, driver... e di cooker... sige na nga, cookerer). And here's a list of her fussiest dishes...
FRUIT SALAD - This one is the closest to my heart, for reasons I've already mentioned. So after beating the cream for hours (at the very least, 2... one time I asked her, 'Why not just use whipped cream?... she looked at me with unmistakable contempt and did not dignify my question with a response... hehehe), she mixes Carnation Condensed milk to it and heats the mixture up over low fire. Of course, since it's cream and there's heat, again it needed to be stirred constantly. Sometimes I still had to do that... sometimes though she preferred to do it herself, and I would skip away happily. Then she mixes it with the fruit cocktail (which she has pre-drained for 24 hours, no less), then mixes in the coconut. When the coconut is in, that's the time she uses her ever-gentle strokes, careful not to hurt the coconut strips. Last to go in is the grated cheese.
When I got married and held parties for Jay, I thought fruit salad would make a nifty dessert... so I made them but in my own style. For a party of 20 people or so, I would get 4 big cans of fruit cocktail, 2 big cans of pineapple chunks (Del Monte, none other) and pre-drain them, also for no less than 24 hours. I never bothered with the coconut (... the coconut nut is a big big nut, but this giant nut is not a nut... tee hee). For this amount of mixture, I would get 4 regular cans of Nestle cream and 1 regular can of Carnation Condensed milk. I would just stir in everything together... no heating, no gentle strokes. I would put in a whole can of Kraft Cheddar Cheese (you know the one in cans, not boxes). Half of it I would grate and mix with the salad. The other half, I would grate over the whole thing, covering it from end to end and when this is done, I would freeze it until it's time to serve.
I told my mom one time that it works just as nice and she wouldn't believe me. So on one occasion I brought fruit salad and had her taste it. She was surprised that I did come up with the same thing, and then asked me again if I really did it my way or if I did it her way and was only passing it on as my way. Blessed are the lazy for they come up with more sensible ways of doing things.... hehehe.
Yam - If fruit salad is close to my heart because I worked on it the hardest, yam is the closest to my sweet tooth... I love yam! She makes it so dry and sticky that when you scoop some up in a spoon and turn it upside down, it won't fall off, no matter how hard you shake it. And it's so smooth and full to the taste... it's simply wonderful.
So first she boils the yam... You have to boil them before peeling cause it's a lot easier that way. Then she grates the boiled yam, mixes milk and sugar and then starts to cook it. She cooks it over log fire and it takes the whole night, stirring it at regular intervals. At first, it's easy enough to stir so she can do it herself. As the yam dries up though, it becomes thicker and more difficult to stir, so then she calls either one of my brothers to stir it for her. In the end, my brothers end up with sore biceps... I don't care... I still love yam... tee hee...:)
Morcon - I haven't really tried cooking this but I've seen her do it so often I almost learned how to do it, but never bothered. She buys slabs of beef, I mean like large chunks, and slices them into 4x7 inch pieces. She also buys strips of pork fat, about an inch thick. She has this steel rod and uses it to punch holes in the center of each piece, lengthwise, through and through, and inserts the pork fat into the hole. This done, she marinades the meat in soy sauce, pepper, laurel leaves... well, that's as much as I can remember... overnight. Then she cooks the whole thing in a pressure cooker, adding a lot of tomatoes, or maybe she adds tomato sauce when the meat is tender cause the sauce come out rather thick.
This is one of her dishes I love best but my mom's too old to be doing this so she's replaced it with...
Lengua - Basically, this is nothing more than ox tongue... or cow, since that is more common in the Philippines. It's not fussy to cook... just sautee it in garlic and onion, put salt, cream of mushroom and button mushrooms and viola!... yum yum...:) The fuss comes in the cleaning of the tongue. First thing to know is that all cleaning has to be done before freezing the meat (if you plan to save it for another day) cause it's more difficult to clean after. Having washed the tongue, she boils it in water to loosen the tough (and dirty) covering of the skin. She does this while it's still hot... scraping, peeling... and it doesn't have a pleasant smell and you get all of it while you're at it. Oh man! When it's cooked though, the meat is so soft it almost melts in your tongue. Simply delicious.
Once I asked her to teach me how to clean the tongue. She did, and I watched, but after a few minutes I walked away. When she asked me why, I told her... I'd like to be able to eat it when it's cooked. I can't if I have to take in all that smell.
My mom is also fussy with spaghetti... aside from minced beef, she puts hotdogs and cuts them into really small pieces. But that I don't mind... I like slicing it small. So I'm gonna cut this short (may konek ba?)... well, relatively.
How is it?... when you think of something tapos konek-konek na siya sa iba't-ibang bagay?... Like when I think of Christmas... I have a sense of cold air, lights, activities, colors and food. Christmas and food... makes sense to me (Nescafe, pahiram ng linya ha... hehehe). I'm writing this and I'm listening to 'Buloy' by Eraserheads and my butt's still painful from my fall two days ago (alang connection, as is where is lang). Jay said he nearly slipped himself the other day. Maybe I better lighten up on the cleaning.... tee hee :)
Anyway... food. We always have the usual... spaghetti, pancit molo, ubeng halaya (yam), fruit salad, embutido, morcon, ham, queso de bola, stuffed chicken (served only on Christmas eve or Christmas lunch cause bawal daw pag new year... lilipad ang suwerte... hehehe), potato salad. Nowadays the morcon has been replaced with lengua (probably my mom's best dish ever) and the stuffed chicken has become an occasional thing.
I remember cooking with my mom for the holidays. We all had to help. Ate Lani would usually be in charge of scraping buko for the fruit salad, Kuya El or Diko Jun would take turns stirring the ube and Darlene would be in charge of grating the cheese for the spaghetti and fruit salad and Daddy would be the watchdog... an eye out for whoever's not doing his share... hehehe. My job was the fussy and tiresome task of beating Nestle cream for the fruit salad. You wouldn't believe how my mom wanted it done... I had to beat it for hours... by hand cause she doesn't believe in electric beaters... until it was thick enough. Like, how thick is it supposed to get?... it's cream, isn't it?
My mom is by nature a fussy cooker (What's wrong with that?... gardener, butler, driver... e di cooker... sige na nga, cookerer). And here's a list of her fussiest dishes...
FRUIT SALAD - This one is the closest to my heart, for reasons I've already mentioned. So after beating the cream for hours (at the very least, 2... one time I asked her, 'Why not just use whipped cream?... she looked at me with unmistakable contempt and did not dignify my question with a response... hehehe), she mixes Carnation Condensed milk to it and heats the mixture up over low fire. Of course, since it's cream and there's heat, again it needed to be stirred constantly. Sometimes I still had to do that... sometimes though she preferred to do it herself, and I would skip away happily. Then she mixes it with the fruit cocktail (which she has pre-drained for 24 hours, no less), then mixes in the coconut. When the coconut is in, that's the time she uses her ever-gentle strokes, careful not to hurt the coconut strips. Last to go in is the grated cheese.
When I got married and held parties for Jay, I thought fruit salad would make a nifty dessert... so I made them but in my own style. For a party of 20 people or so, I would get 4 big cans of fruit cocktail, 2 big cans of pineapple chunks (Del Monte, none other) and pre-drain them, also for no less than 24 hours. I never bothered with the coconut (... the coconut nut is a big big nut, but this giant nut is not a nut... tee hee). For this amount of mixture, I would get 4 regular cans of Nestle cream and 1 regular can of Carnation Condensed milk. I would just stir in everything together... no heating, no gentle strokes. I would put in a whole can of Kraft Cheddar Cheese (you know the one in cans, not boxes). Half of it I would grate and mix with the salad. The other half, I would grate over the whole thing, covering it from end to end and when this is done, I would freeze it until it's time to serve.
I told my mom one time that it works just as nice and she wouldn't believe me. So on one occasion I brought fruit salad and had her taste it. She was surprised that I did come up with the same thing, and then asked me again if I really did it my way or if I did it her way and was only passing it on as my way. Blessed are the lazy for they come up with more sensible ways of doing things.... hehehe.
Yam - If fruit salad is close to my heart because I worked on it the hardest, yam is the closest to my sweet tooth... I love yam! She makes it so dry and sticky that when you scoop some up in a spoon and turn it upside down, it won't fall off, no matter how hard you shake it. And it's so smooth and full to the taste... it's simply wonderful.
So first she boils the yam... You have to boil them before peeling cause it's a lot easier that way. Then she grates the boiled yam, mixes milk and sugar and then starts to cook it. She cooks it over log fire and it takes the whole night, stirring it at regular intervals. At first, it's easy enough to stir so she can do it herself. As the yam dries up though, it becomes thicker and more difficult to stir, so then she calls either one of my brothers to stir it for her. In the end, my brothers end up with sore biceps... I don't care... I still love yam... tee hee...:)
Morcon - I haven't really tried cooking this but I've seen her do it so often I almost learned how to do it, but never bothered. She buys slabs of beef, I mean like large chunks, and slices them into 4x7 inch pieces. She also buys strips of pork fat, about an inch thick. She has this steel rod and uses it to punch holes in the center of each piece, lengthwise, through and through, and inserts the pork fat into the hole. This done, she marinades the meat in soy sauce, pepper, laurel leaves... well, that's as much as I can remember... overnight. Then she cooks the whole thing in a pressure cooker, adding a lot of tomatoes, or maybe she adds tomato sauce when the meat is tender cause the sauce come out rather thick.
This is one of her dishes I love best but my mom's too old to be doing this so she's replaced it with...
Lengua - Basically, this is nothing more than ox tongue... or cow, since that is more common in the Philippines. It's not fussy to cook... just sautee it in garlic and onion, put salt, cream of mushroom and button mushrooms and viola!... yum yum...:) The fuss comes in the cleaning of the tongue. First thing to know is that all cleaning has to be done before freezing the meat (if you plan to save it for another day) cause it's more difficult to clean after. Having washed the tongue, she boils it in water to loosen the tough (and dirty) covering of the skin. She does this while it's still hot... scraping, peeling... and it doesn't have a pleasant smell and you get all of it while you're at it. Oh man! When it's cooked though, the meat is so soft it almost melts in your tongue. Simply delicious.
Once I asked her to teach me how to clean the tongue. She did, and I watched, but after a few minutes I walked away. When she asked me why, I told her... I'd like to be able to eat it when it's cooked. I can't if I have to take in all that smell.
My mom is also fussy with spaghetti... aside from minced beef, she puts hotdogs and cuts them into really small pieces. But that I don't mind... I like slicing it small. So I'm gonna cut this short (may konek ba?)... well, relatively.
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