Going Bananas

According to Taste Atlas, our very own fried bananas known as turon (deep-fried banana rolls) and maruya (fried banana fritters) are included in the 50 best deep-fried desserts in the world.

They may not be the healthiest of choices but are very popular as desserts or for afternoon snacks. Turon which is sugar-dusted and rolled in lumpia wrapper with slivers of ripe jackfruit ranked in 21st place. The lumpia wrapper makes it so crispy especially when it is newly cooked. Maruya, mashed banana mixed with batter and deep-fried was in 36th place, ranking nine places above the popular US dessert funnel cake.

Photo culled from Rappler. This a Turon.

Sometimes, when we need dessert or merienda,we buy turon at the nearby store at P12 each. In malls, they sell it at P25.

Bananas like sweet plaintain used in these two recipes are rich in fiber, antioxidants and other nutrients.

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Tasty Snacks

Been taking hot tea the whole day. It is a little cold here and you can hear the thunder in the distance. Before lunch, Jovy went out to buy ingredients for our afternoon snack. We were all craving for those traditional recipes like ginataang mais. (coconut milk rice pudding with sweet corn).

It’s the first time in years that I’ve tasted it again. We used malagkit (sticky rice), coconut cream in pouches, 2 cans of corn kernels and a little sugar to taste. I gave a tub to our neighbor and he said it was yummy. I agree.

I also ordered two boxes of our famous Hopia in two different flavors. Hopia is a Filipino-Chinese pastry with different fillings. It is known in Asia than anywhere else. Here, I took a shot too.

belVita has become a favorite. Perfect with a hot cup of tea. This time, it’s Wild berry. I love experimenting on different fruit tea flavors.

Gosh, I am ashamed. When you are on a lockdown, sometimes all you think is about food. We are again on modified enhanced community quarantine until August 18. So far we have the highest number of days of lockdown period but still, COVID positive individuals are still rising every day. So really sad.

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Sushi Bake At Iba Pa

Been busy the last three days. Ah, just busy reading and watching Josef and Jovy revive their small business.  It is the “in” thing now, online selling to friends, relatives and neighbors. This time though, they partnered with a former classmate of Jovy in their culinary arts class at DLSU-St. Benilde.  He does the cooking and Jovy and  Josef are in-charge of marketing the product.  There is another friend who prepares the brownies and crinkles.

Yesterday, there were so many orders of  baked kani mango sushi, chocolate crinkles, brownies and cookies. For the first time, I tasted baked sushi. Boy, what a heavenly taste. Just love it. It is a little expensive though because the ingredients are complete – Japanese rice, mango, kani, cream cheese, cucumber, Japanese mayonnaise, nori sheets  and some other ingredients I am not familiar with. We had it again for dinner tonight with spaghetti and milk tea. I don’t drink milk tea though because I don’t like milk. It seems like those rolled/sliced California maki are no longer popular here.

The baked sushi are priced differently according to size.

 

Mini red velvet crinkles, choco chips, supreme walnut brownies and fudgy brownies.

 

We had this again for dinner this evening – kani mango sushi bake.

Online food business is really that good. There were more orders today picked up by Grab Food for delivery to different places here in Metro Manila.

 

 

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Star Apple, Anyone?

Locally we call it kaimito.

It’s best eaten cold from the ref. In the province, neighbors give this for free. Star Apple is a fruit that grows in the tropics including Southeast Asia. We harvest them around March and April. A kilo (around five pieces) costs P70.00.

Aside from being a tasty dessert, it has several health benefits too. It contains vitamins A, B, C, lysine, niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, dietary fiber, amino acids, methionine, and protein. It has minerals such as iron, copper, magnesium, calcium, zinc, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium.

Kaimito, anyone?

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Tupig And Other Stories

I was boiling water for afternoon tea, contemplating on what life is all about and looking at the robust orange bulb plants I planted in pots outside  our grill door. when two airplanes passed by. One was going north and the other one was going south to where our airports are located. Our place is on the east side of  Metro Manila so their path is always this way. It made me think of those people inside those two planes. The one going north made me ask myself, “where are they going? Are they leaving their families behind seeking greener pastures abroad? Are they tourists out to discover new places?” And  I can’t help thinking too, the family of those going to the airport must be so happy that they’ll be seeing their kins again or maybe they come from other places and would love to visit the Philippines.

I was busy this morning catching up with my two brothers and sis-in-law online and through calls and texts. My brother next to me has been sick for almost two weeks now, on and off fever, acute UTI and raised blood sugar. I was alarmed.  They’ve been to the doctor thrice with labs and medications. My youngest brother whose family lives in Tulsa called me up through Viber and we had a long chat about life, our family, my other brother’s illness and life here in the Philippines compared to the US where they have been living for more than twenty years now.

He bragged about making Tupig, our favorite kakanin  (sweet delicacies) back in the province.  He said he hasn’t tasted one for so many years now so he made his own. I borrowed the photos he posted earlier.

We call this tupig in our dialect.

It’s made of sticky rice powder, coconut cream, fresh grated young coconut or what we call buko locally, a little sugar and margarine to wipe the banana leaves before wrapping the mixture so it won’t stick when it’s cooked.

Then you have to grill them until they are cooked.

 

There, it is nicely done and he said it tasted better than the commercial ones we used to buy when we go back home to the province. I have never attempted preparing this but I will try it one of these days.

My brother is a great cook. He also experiments on other desserts native to our country. Maybe he misses  his land of birth. It’s another afternoon of reminiscing.

 

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Halo-halo

It’s not officially summer yet but the sun gets hot so early in the morning. More so in the middle of the day. Any day now though, PAGASA says they will declare it’s the summer season.

Summer.

Time for tropical fruits that abound in every nook and cranny of the  country. But one authentic summer offering by those in high-end restaurants, carinderias and resto bars, and those enterprising homeowners who sell them in the afternoon in front of their gates during summer is halo-halo. 

Halo-halo.

culled from the net, Pinoy Food.

You might just laugh at its English translation. It simply means mixed.  There are so many variations of halo-halo depending on the available ingredients. Ingredients include the following:

• sweet red bean (munggo)
• sweet white beans
• coconut gel (nata de coco)
• macapuno (gelatinous coconut string)
• Fresh or canned jackfruit, cut into chunks
• Shaved ice
• Evaporated milk
• Ube ice cream

You can even mix boiled sweet potato, boiled Saba bananas and top it with slivers of cheese and small slices of leche flan. It’s one summer dessert that you can  prepare on your own.

One thing I’ve tasted so far and it was so good was Kuya J’s Ube halo-halo. Bits of ube ice are mixed in the recipe so even if the ice melts, it does not change the taste. It’s melt- in-the-mouth goodness.

Refreshing halo-halo, anyone?

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Busy, Busy Weekend

I have always said that when you are used to blogging every day, a day missed seemed like a week, right?

For two consecutive days during the weekend, I helped Jovy and Josef with the baking. They have so many orders and they also joined a bazaar over the weekend. It’s actually a hard job but when you like and appreciate what you do, you would enjoy it.

A close friend just dropped by a while ago to get her orders of five tins of dream cake.  Dark chocolate, white chocolate, ganache, you name it, we have them here. She loves it so much when I gave her a tin last month and she swore with its melt in the mouth goodness. The good thing about it is it is not too sweet, unlike those commercially sold chocolate cakes in the market. Pasti mallows are sometimes a hit too.  They just baked brownies with  easy melt white chocolate on top. We have to do with food ordered at our local Tapsihan corner here at the village because we had no time to cook, otherwise, it’s canned goods for a while.  It’s quite heartwarming to hear that they love what we bake.

I haven’t read in a while, for about three days now. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is on my “currently reading” list.  It’s Goodreads’ Choice Award For Fiction and for Debut Author  for 2018. I didn’t expect to enjoy this, the story is so different from the other stories that I’ve read  before. I don’t actually read sci-fi fiction but this is somehow engrossing. I just don’t have enough time to read continuously.

It’s only two weeks more to go before Christmas and I have yet to wrap some of the gifts that I bought late.  It’s time too to think on what menu to prepare on Christmas Eve and  Christmas day.

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Dream Cake

Josef and Jovy call it  Dream Cake. It’s their new sideline, baking this super yummy but not too sweet chocolate cake in three layers with ganache.  I love the dark chocolate on top of it. They started almost a month ago and there are  now so many repeat orders.

The cake is placed in tin cans. and topped with dark chocolate. Three days ago, I’ve only just tasted a small jar of it. I gave a tin to my friend Odette when she came over last Sunday. She loves it.

 

 

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Yummy Dessert

This is quite a late post but I am proud to share it with all of you.  A few days after Christmas, my oldest brother gave us  about two kilos of Ube (purple yam). Since it was too  big for us  to just  boil it, Josef and I decided to make Halayang Ube.  We used to buy halaya on certain occasions at home, it is not a regular fare for us.  The day before New Year, we had the whole thing boiled and mashed finely.  There is a sort of excitement making a dessert for the first time. It is time-consuming to mix it while in the pan because you have to make sure that it comes out sticky and thick enough.  Imagine an hour of mixing it on top of the stove while cooking.

I used about two cups of coconut cream, 3/4  stick of butter and three cans of condensed milk, no sugar added. The original recipe calls for the first two ingredients plus two cans of condensed milk, two cans of evaporated milk and a cup of sugar.  My son made a mistake of buying  milk though. He thought he bought two each of milk but when I  opened the cans, the third one is also a condensed milk. Instead of going back to the grocery store, I just used all the three cans of condensed milk without adding sugar.   The halaya was  creamy, just perfect topped with grated cheese.

Boiled ube or what we call purple yam.

 

It’s a yummy Ube Halaya, added it to our desserts during our media noche.

There is always a first time for everything. Experimenting in the kitchen was a success.  You have to let it cool for at least two hours inside the ref  before eating. It is best served actually the next day.  I will do this again if we could find fresh Ube  roots in the market. I think that harvesting it is seasonal too.  It is one of those yummy treats that you could make on your own and won’t have to buy the finished product.

 

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Have A Blessed Palm Sunday

We were just in time for the blessing of the palms at the church grounds.  It’s a good thing we were early since the church was full.

Palm Sunday  always has that festive atmosphere, it is a celebration  of Jesus’ triumphal entry  into Jerusalem.  The gospel is quite long but the priest delivered an inspiring and meaningful homily.

Right after the mass, we went to buy sweet potatoes on the roadside, they were selling it at P30 a kilo. Then I saw an old lady selling suman sa latik.  I’ve craved for something sweet the past few days but I was too lazy to go out because of the heat and it’s been a while since we bought kakanin.  Josef laughed when I said, “hmm…this is so yummy”.

Suman sa latik

All that mouth-watering goodness. It’s made of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. The toppings are just coconut creme with a little sugar and freshly grated coconut for that nutty flavor.

May you have a meaningful Palm Sunday celebration.

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