A (Not-So) French Onion Soup

Onion soup on a humid Sunday seems quaint,
but it surely tamed six hungry tummies!

Onion soup cures colds and heartaches. Well, at least for me.

When Patrick asked the ingredients for the onion soup while doing his shopping for the feast, I didn't know I'll be preparing it. Taken by surprise, I had to make it from how I usually do it - not the French way.

There are two ways to prepare your onion for the soup, each depends on the length of time available to cook it:

- Minced onion: Short-time preparation. Personally, I like taking bites on the sweet white onion while sipping the soup. It gives a kick to its otherwise gooey texture.

- Peel it, leave it whole: Longer time required. Aside from the length of time which takes an hour at least, you need a good thick-bottomed pot to avoid burning your onions. Burnt food NEVER taste good. If you prefer just taking the taste of onion on the soup, this is for you.

Eat and Run and Vice Versa Because Life is All About Running Around Anyway. C’est la vie!

oh the chaos!

Whilst Edith Piaf’s Non Je Ne Regrette Rien blasted on the stereo, the chopping boards sounded in (un)rhythmic staccato to Abba’s Mama Mia. The kitchen was in total confusion, with aroma of Europe blasting in that humid Sunday afternoon, and the sound of the frying pans banging on the floor to the occasional ohhs and ahhs and yays of the clumsy cooks!

fiesta eh!

It was a muddled European fantasy fished straight out of Danny Boyle’s psyche. With the Eifel Tower and Big Ben within arm’s reach, and the Pissa leaning side by side Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia amid confetti and yellowbells adorning a sun-spotted, star-spangled tablerunner with a wee pine tree at the middle.

She was named after the star: Maria Luningning, oh how telenovela-ish

Madness not even the Madhatter’s Tea Party was at par. The disjoint was pretty obvious. We started the day quite early with half of the clumsy cooks running for Nat Geo’s Earth Day finishing our line at Tapa King then heading straight to the grocery and the wet market where a spitting clam and a transvestite mutually coexisted.

Blimey! Oh my Gulay!

Moby. Morrissey. Morissette. Natalie Portman. Oliver Stone. Paul McCartney. Pink. Voltaire. Wolfgang Peterson. Zooey Deschanel. Michael Jackson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Albert Einstein. Mahatma Gandhi. Ashley Judd. Great people. Vegetarians. Surprised?

Previously, I abhorred ve-ge-ta-bles like I was the absolute anti-thesis to Lucky Me’s makulay ang buhay sa sinabawang gulay campaign. As much as I liked to sing to the Bahay Kubo as apap would cultivate his greens around the house, vegetables and its other forms were total nightmares to me at the dining table. Think the Attack of the Killer Tomato with its minions: the pungent radish, the evil ampalaya, the yucky okra, and the vicious malunggay!

But, by fate or circumstances, by my quarterlife I started to love oh my gulays oh so dearly- and of all places pa, in the UK! It was rather (un)fortunate that whilst managing the Global Xchange Programme- a 6-month cultural and volunteer exchange in the UK and PH, I got to live with errr, ethical people? Yeah, you heard it right- a bunch of cool dudes espousing ethical living whose products in the flat spelled local, organic, fair-trade, child-labour free, vegetarian, and so on and so forth. Because I so loved my flatmates and their tree-hugging radical friends, out of respect I started not to devour anything with feet and eyes in front of them so I can join them over campfires and booze, and football and shit at the park! In short, I’ve become vegetarian, que horror!

The Birth of Awesomeness!

Of all the special occasions in my life, my birthday would probably be the least I am eagerly anticipating.

The enthusiasm I have on my birthday is weirdly going downhill as I grow old. Maybe because it’s the realization that as you grow old, having your birthday celebrated means you’re the one who’s going to spend for it. There are no moms and pops that will give you a party and buy you a cake. No ninangs and ninongs giving you gifts. This is now the point in your life you realize that, as a grown-up, you are now responsible of making that day memorable.

So in the advent of my looming 25^th birthday, I realized that I have the choice to make it fun and unforgettable. That’s why when Patrick insisted that I should probably celebrate my birthday with another cookfest with the explocook gang, I texted Maggie right away if we can abuse her house again and she said yes. 

A Copycat's Take on a J. Oliver Recipe

Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken with New Potatoes and Asparagus in Herby Yogurt

This is based on a recipe of the same title
 from Cook with Jaime Oliver,  2006 Oct, UK.

I am one among millions of Jaime Oliver followers, because:

- I like the way he cooks: crude, disorganized in an adorable way;

- He has meltdowns. I do too. When it happens, he moves on, tries it again and makes it better. I don't; I stop and never go back, my dinuguan in 2002 is the perfect example;

- Aside from cooking, he plants, and; 

- I have always imagined ending up with a Filipino version of him (OH YES! I AM A DREAMER!). Instead, I got a mutated Larry Page stalker-in-denial, Michael Greer-wannabe, Andrew Dan-Jumbo in-the-making and a devout Ric Segreto fanatic who once cooked a very tasty chicken adobo on our second date and was never able to recreate it years after. I say, typical one-hit wonder.

Often when I serve meals I got from Mr. Oliver, most of my friends find it too “foreign” for their taste. When you have friends with tongue predisposed to eating saucy Spanish, salty Filipino, overcooked Tsinoy (Filipino-Chinese) food, all others are foreign.

Death By Chocolate ver 2

Death By Chocolate ver 2 with fresh mint leaves.

Everybody LIKES chocolate – somehow. No, don't shake your head in disagreement. As a hilaw na manga and bagoong-person (my soul tingles at the sight of green mango and sauteed salted shrimp fry), I would probably do the same if I hear that statement from someone else. But you have to admit, we all have chocolate fixes. Mine is a candy-coated dark chocolate with peanuts. Yes, Patrick, I agree that it is indeed a rip-off since the candy coating is relatively thick, there's too little chocolate in it and the peanut inside is more or less 400% bigger than an average-sized peanut in a Prinsesa pack. If you grew up in the Philippines, circa 80s to 90s, you probably know what Prinsesa is.

When Ryan asked for a chocolatier cake for his birthday, I knew I had to come up with something that will make his pores bleed chocolate and his eyes pop in overload.

I landed on Cacaoweb's Death By Chocolate which I consider version 1. It is a fairly simply recipe but it requires an oven. If you intend to make this, you do not need to buy an oven (yet, although it is a good investment); if you have friends who own one, visit them, bake and increase your pogi/ganda points.

Gusto ko ng baboy!

“My brother is not a pig!”, sobbed Nora Aunor in Minsan May Isang Gamu-Gamo to an American Serviceman who shot his brother who mistook him for a wild boar. The incident compelled Corazon de la Cruz (Aunor) to cancel her trip in the land of milk and honey to work as a nurse.

This scene was so powerful that aside from awakening my senses to the struggle of Filipinos against the Americans in the Philippines, also introduced me to the use of the word pig. Prior to that, the only pig I knew were the ones in the corral which my dad raised, but from thereon I got the liking of using pig or baboy in anything I find unacceptable- mostly on how people behaved.