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stef_foodie

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Posts posted by stef_foodie

  1. Hi MizDucky, did you ever try those chicken skins cooked Filipino style? If you have, we'd love to read what you to have say about it.

    Lasang Pinoy 15 just launched with the theme "Recycled, Reloaded" -- it's about the creative ways Filipinos use up leftovers. But the blogging event isn't limited to Filipinos only -- all lovers of Filipino food, or those just trying out our wonderful dishes, are welcome. Thought I might as well extend the invitation here.

    The Lasang Pinoy 15 announcement can be found here:

    Lasang Pinoy 15: Recycled, Reloaded

    Come join us!

    And as an FYI to everyone, in case there are still some of you looking, Filipino pork rinds are found in Asian stores, of course, but in case you don't have one near you, try the chips section of your local grocery. There are some great varieties, usually made in the South (US). Also ones made in Mexico. A Nicaraguan friend once prepared a salad for us, topped with the same chicharrones as he called them.

  2. doesn't seem to be a lot of people interested in this topic, huh. my hubby ate "normal" all his life. now that he's in his early 40s he has to stay completely away from wheat, eggs and dairy. it's one thing to discover allergies when you're little, it's entirely another when you're an adult and have to stop eating foods you've loved. not that my kids aren't "suffering" either. they have their sensitivities and allergies too, so now everybody's missing bread -- they haven't had any in 2 weeks. :sad:

  3. i had the KA stuffer until my KA broke, then i got a DLX assistent -- works wonderfully especially on large batches... except sometimes it chokes on gristle and fat.

    want a "free" sausage stuffer? take a 2-liter bottle of soda, cut out the lower 2/3 of the bottle, put your sausage casings -- like a sock -- onto the mouth of the bottle. put your sausage mix into the used-to-be-upper-third of the bottle. push down with knife or spoon or whatever works for you. crude, but works in a pinch, or when you don't want to spend $$$ on a stuffer, or when like me, you're too lazy to take out the parts of your machine and put them together. especially for small batches this is what i usually end up doing -- either this or make skinless sausages instead.:)

  4. I have the OXO Good Grips as well and am very happy with it! I looked at the Bron and was drooling over it for a long time, but to be honest I was intimidated by it. Decided to get the OXO because of the great reviews, and because I've been a long-time OXO user. So far I haven't regretted it yet. The price of course is a bonus!

  5. It was easy enough for the Spaniards to bring us corn from America,  after all, they ruled us for the most part through the Viceroy of Mexico where for more than a thousand years maize was the principal sustenance of the entire hemisphere.  They must have brought us the cooking process too since our preparation of binatog is so cunningly similar to that of hominy or posole (in Mexico), from the husking down to the boiling in wood ash.  The matching with grated coconut is strictly ours.

    i just found a brazilian dish called canjica, also made from hominy and grated coconut. flavored with sugar *and* salt, like our binato. the difference is they also add milk and peanuts.

  6. Since ramen = carbs, I usually like to add some protein (slices of boiled egg, cold cuts, canned tuna, tofu, etc) and fast cooking veggies (green onions, minced garlic,  bean sprouts, spinach). For flavouring kimchi and its "juice", doenjang/gochujang paste, chili flakes, seasame oil.

    I am not the biggest fan of instant ramen though ... nutrientless calories at its best ;)

    We've had to stop buying ramen completely. My kids love it, and I always tried to make it a bit healthier by adding some chopped veggies -- cooked it in the broth before adding the noodles -- until the last time we got some, and my 4-yo's face swelled up after having a bowlful, and her eyes started itching like crazy. Yikes! Benadryl to the rescue. Never again. All my kids have some form of food allergy, but that was the worst reaction (and very quick too) I had ever seen on any of them.

  7. I was telling PPPans that there's no green tamarind available here as I've only ever seen the blocks, pastes, and liquids -- but recently I found frozen green tamarind (from the Philippines) at Asian Food Center in New Jersey (Rte. 22). I also found some green tamarind (in paste form) at my local Wegman's (Northeast PA), in the Indian food aisle. Was in a hurry and didn't check to see where it came from though.

  8. Thanks for the link! I found another one last night that had shocking stories, too including a different theory about his death. LOL. I think you're right. I'll stick with the dessert plate. I also found an interesting book at Amazon that I'll be looking for today.

    Nutcracker Sweet

    When you read about his life  in his biography  you will no doubt agree with the idea of focusing upon themes from his ballets for food-related meals ... much of his life revolved around the music he wrote and his personal 'issues'.

  9. You're right, Tony. Take Viking for instance -- for every person who loves their Viking, there's a person who would say they hated it or decided against it. I think it all comes down to what tasks are most important to you in the kitchen and how much you're willing to spend to do that task more efficiently, more authentically, or whathaveyou. Right now I'm vacillating between getting the Blue Star (for the high BTUs) and a lower-end range + a $50 wok burner for outside use. The difference in price is considerable, but at the same time I do stir-fries several times a week, so I certainly will put any appliance I get, low- or high-end, to good use. Same thing with the oven -- we do a lot of baking; deciding right now between the full-featured Miele and a less expensive one (but without a rotisserie and other features). Been wrestling with these decisions for over two years, and I still haven't decided :laugh:

    The thing with appliances with more/better features is that more things can go wrong as well, that's just a given. Bottom line, you have to decide if the extra headaches that are bound to come with the bells and whistles are worth it for you. We all have our personal thresholds of what's acceptable in terms of performance and price. And we all have our own priorities that ultimately will determine what percentage of our hard-earned dollars will go into equipping a kitchen.

  10. piping in to say i'm another DLX user/lover. i'm also a CI fan and have been for a while, though like many say, I've gotten tired of the "yankee" recipes. thank goodness i didn't see the DLX review before i bought mine, because at the time i still ranked them highly on my list of credible sources of information, and if i had seen that i might have thought twice about my purchase.

    I have a KA and have done a side by side test of beating egg whites, using a copper liner in my KA bowl and the plastic bowl with the twin beaters on the DLX. 

    The volume in the DLX was greater than the volume in the KA when both batches were turned out into bowls of the same size.

  11. Consumer Reports isn't without bias either. It's not just the people at Gardenweb that say or know this. And I certainly don't make my decisions either based on ONE forum, but rather do a lot of research on my own, ask people I know that have them, test appliances, etc., before I buy them. I meant the post to be a "take it or leave it" suggestion. Sorry!

    PS As I mentioned, my friends (real people, not online) have had horrendous GE customer service experience. Glad to hear your experience was the opposite.

  12. oh no! i hope you haven't bought your GE appliances yet.

    LOTS of horror stories over the past several years at ths.gardenweb.com/forums/appl.

    I basically did my research there when we thought we were building two years ago. Then again last month we thought we were going to build so I started researching appliances. Ended up buying a house but we're remodeling, so I'm not done -- sorthing through ovens and ranges right now.

    I have *not* read convincing stories about GE or Viking to make me want to buy any of their appliances. GE's customer service is appalling too, as some of my friends will attest. We also lived in Cincinnati for a bit and will be moving back soon, so we have some friends who worked at GE -- no good stories there either.

  13. i'd keep both if i were you. i killed two of them, so a spare one is always nice *just in case*. vintage hobarts are precious compared to the new ones, so if in a year or two you still haven't used it you could always sell it on ebay, where people like me are waiting to pounce :D

    if i had found a regular-sized one on ebay i would have purchased it -- but since i didn't i got an electrolux dlx instead -- and been a very happy baker for the past year.

  14. megan, do you have a food blog i could visit? your pictures are awesome!

    for lunch today we tried some pani puri -- very tedious rolling and frying but yum -- which my kids loved. that along with some channa ki dahl.

    stef :smile:

  15. i got my big ticket items last year (new assistent, grain mill, 8-ft kitchen island), so this year i'm going easy on the hubby:D

    i just want some new baking sheets

    and some new potholders -- the LOOONG ones -- i keep burning myself on the oven racks.

    a waring pro blender would be nice too... and a cuisinart waffler that flips.... and a box of all kinds and shapes of china pieces -- i have a china fetish! -- for my food blog.

  16. Speaking of endangered recipes.  I wonder if anyone here has a recipe for the real puto seco.  I tried googling it but I only got butter cookies called by the same name and it made me wonder how  it has metamorphed into something completely different in just a matter of thirty years.  The real puto seco was a dry and powdery cookie that appeared to me made of just rice flour or rootstarch, maybe coconut milk and sugar, very fragile.  They use to be sold by lady vendors from Pampanga during the  October fiestas in Bataan.  They sold them in three grades, depending on size and finess of the flour used.  They seemed to have been baked in shallow molds 5 cm in diameter and a tad less than a centimetre thick.

    I wonder too if they were related at all to Aráró , a specialty of the first town north of us.  What is still commercially available there now appear to have been watered down and altered, including the shape.  I watched once how they were made using antique wooden molds.  The dough recipe that was actually followed was that of the original Tinapay San Nicolas.  I sometimes make them (for family) up here in Canada using springerle molds from Germany.  I suspect that Tinapay San Nicolas descended from Springerle because both are flavoured with anise and one of the frequently used mold motifs in Germany were those of Saint Nicholas since they are intended for Christmas.  Unlike Tinapay San Nicolas though, Springerle uses a noxious leavening agent called hartshorn, our amoniaco.

    And finally did you notice our penchant for dry powdery treats like the two above and polvoron and espasol.  Is this a deliberate incitement to “hirin” and therefore to a drink of water?

    apicio, our relatives (in laguna) can still purchasa few years ago at least when someone sent us some.

    we call your araro "uraro", usually it's my papa's relatives from quezon that send this to us -- i think it's a specialty there -- my mom's fe puto seco that's exactly as you describe -- dry, powdery, and hirin-inducing :laugh: -- until amily from laguna get them in liliw. though the more recent ones we've received and even those i ate in liliw in '97 were thinner than the ones i remember from my childhood.

    i have fellow homeschooling moms who cook/bake according to the liturgical year and we've discussed st. nicholas sweets in depth, including speculaas and kraberli/springerle. a few of them even collect the old antique molds (whoa, are those things expensive!) just to prepare the cookies "properly". they say the hartshorn (basically a precursor of our baking powder/baking soda) isn't really an essential even when preparing *authentic* springerle/kraberli. one tip i've learned from them; they are traditionally served with some Bishop's wine/mulled wine -- perhaps it's also because they're on the dry side like our cookies?

    i have a recipe of puto seco somewhere -- i'll post it here/e-mail you when i find it. -- but may be a while since we're going out of town for a couple of weeks.

    Edited to say: I don't know what happened up there but that was supposed to say

    "until recently my family from laguna still goes just to get them in liliw".

  17. We are visiting Cambridge/Boston this weekend and a friend advised we park at Porter Exchange while visiting Cambridge. Since we'll get there by lunchtime we'll have lunch in the area before visiting Harvard and MIT. Any family-friendly places you can recommend? I see that there are several Japanese food spots in Kotobukiya Market itself, but I tried to find reviews and only found a short reference to Ittyo. The nearer (a few blocks max) to Kotobukiya Market the better. Thanks!

    ____________

    Whoops, change of plans. We don't have to park at Porter Exchange. So if you have recommendations anywhere near the Museum of Natural History that would be great! Thanks!

  18. like pppans, i'm not too familiar with menudo using ground meat, though i've seen several recipes in cookbooks doing exactly that. (ground meat is what we use for picadillo -- which may or may not include raisins -- and also very similar to the meat mixture in arroz a la cubana, the main difference being that the cubana dish is served with fried saba bananas.) my lolo insisted that everything for menudo be cubed, and uniformly too. curiously, the mexican menudo i've read about uses tripe, and is more similar to what we call callos.

  19. :laugh: about menudo. this may shock some of you (but then again, maybe not) -- but my lolo was making menudo once for the whole family and didn't have enough meat, so he used.... HOTDOGS! it became a family tradition and now my brother HAS to have hotdogs in it or it's not menudo for him. i wouldn't be surprised if this practice isn't unique in my family, though i haven't put hotdogs in mine for years, for health reasons.

    OTOH, i've posted on friends' blogs before about a dish that stumps me -- i first had it at a cousin-in-law's house, but i haven't found a Pinoy who's familiar with it -- perhaps someone here could help? it's "sinantomas", very similar to menudo, but with cheese! a bit of history and anything else you might know about the dish would be much appreciated.

    aha, papak! this is one Tagalog word my kids (born and raised here) know very well. it's a daily term used at the dinner table, especially when they love the ulam -- the meal usually ends with "Mommy, may I papak?" (Mommy, may I have more ulam without the rice?).... i usually acquiesce unless dad needs it for his baon (packed lunch the next day).

    brian, thanks for the videoke explanation. not having been to the philippines in 8 years, i haven't seen our newer videoke/karaoke bars. as for the crabs, you're right, we didn't traditionally have crab claw crackers. my parents cracked the crab claws for me with the help of a mallet or the handle of a knife :laugh: .

    karen, are those crablets talangka? those are the only little crabs i am familiar with. and ITA about the rice -- most non-Pinoys perceive our food as salty because they're not used to having so much rice in a meal. i haven't delved into the history but i'm theorizing that in my ancestors' days, they couldn't afford to put a lot of ulam on the table. i've even heard tales of people just adding salt to their rice. when i was little and didn't like what was on the table i'd have some bagoong and kalamansi with my rice. my papa called the practice nagkikimi. whereas here in the US it's usually the protein part of the meal that's dominant on our plates, in our Pinoy tables it's the rice. though this has been changing lately with the media's preoccupation with diets; even Pinoys are into South Beach and other low-carb diets. :hmmm:

  20. Wow, Brian, thanks so much for sharing all that with us!!! I am soo envious, especially about the Big Ole Crabs!!! The big ones here just aren't as flavorful IMHO.

    Question: your pic at the videoke bar -- was that a PC screen in front of that guy wearing the beige/yellow shirt? What was it for? Just curious, that's all.

    Oh, and it's "kalamansi", with an "n". The English name is Calamondin, Latin citrus mitis, syn. Citrus madurensis, Citrus microcarpa. aka kalamunding in Tagalog, aka Philippine lime and Chinese orange.

    Looks like you had a wonderful time. Anticipating your next post next time you go!

  21. Oh Apicio, if you only knew. When I first came here I'd get almost tearful at supermarkets when I would see the colorless, flavorless Chiquita and sorely miss my lakatan, which I would eat -- as a teenager -- by the bunch. Through the years I've learned to resign myself to the fact that I won't ever have it here. A friend was raving to me about how organic bananas taste so much better than conventionally grown ones -- she has no idea. Lately I've been feeling hopeful though as I've heard of Jamaican lacatan being grown in Southern California and we may make it there next year. I can't wait!

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