14 Sep, 2006
I think banana leaves are fascinating and generally under appreciated. They are nature’s perfect cooking vessel… abundant, biodegradeable, versatile, good-looking, economical, etc. Across several tropical countries, banana leaves are used as liners for cakes and baked goods, wrappers of sausages, rice cakes, fish and many other dishes. The leaves not only…
13 Sep, 2006
There are two Indonesian soups that I absolutely adore. The first is a Sop Buntot (they made a terrific one at the Hotel Intercontinental Borobudur Hotel where I lived for roughly 3-4 years) which is an oxtail soup with tremendous flavor from slow cooked oxtails and spices including galangal. If allowed to…
12 Sep, 2006
I spent several years in Indonesia and it was there that I learned how to eat food with chili. Serious chili. Considering that Southeast Asia probably didn’t have chilies before the Spaniards brought them from Central America 500 odd years ago, it’s amazing how quickly and intensely certain cuisines have adopted them…
12 Sep, 2006
We were watching The Food Network a few days ago and Giada di Laurentis was cooking up some polenta that she then fried, sprinkled with parmesan cheese and served with a thickened tomato sauce. It looked really simple and seemed like something we could get our 10 year old daughter to try. …
12 Sep, 2006
I was setting up to photograph my wild millet or kabog that I purchased in Cebu last week when I realized I should include some other grains/starches that I also had handy. I have been trying to broaden our base of starches away from just white rice and in stock in the pantry,…
11 Sep, 2006
I found these delicious Japanese/Korean pears at the market the other day for just PHP140 a kilo. Relative to their previously lofty prices, that is a steal. Fruits from temperate countries seem to be peaking just about now, after a long summer of growth and ripening. August and September mean…
11 Sep, 2006
None of the information regarding the breadfruit in the previous post was known to me when this vegetable/fruit was foisted on me as a pre-teen. On trips to my mother’s ancestral hometown in Bohol, we used to have to make the rounds of every major home on the main street in the days after…
10 Sep, 2006
Very closely related to Kamansi (Seeded Breadfruit), Kolo or Rimas (Breadfruit) (Artocarpus altilis) is a native of the Pacific Islands. It featured prominently as the cargo of Captain William Bligh in the Bounty, as in “Mutiny on the Bounty.†The Bounty’s cargo of several thousand breadfruit seedlings was destined for the…