Comments on: Filipino Cook/Food Books…

By: dee bee

dee bee — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 04:18:04 +0000

Currently reading “Thai Food” by David Thompson, an excellent and well-researched book, and can’t help wishing for a version covering Filipino food. This reminded me of this post. Hope to see your book published one day. I’ve reserved a place for it in our library :)

By: Libia Chavez

Libia Chavez — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:17:05 +0000

Have most of the books piled up.Am an avid recipe book collector have tons of it, except for maybe 50 or so titles most I get from sale, garage, used books sale ukay ukay books anywhere I go. I have an Apicius cookbook and a german sausage book where I only understand maybe 2 words i remember from german 10. Very good reading for me are:Slow food, memoirs of a Filipino Kitchen and Felice Sta Maria’s book, (although a friend who is an Ambeth Ocampo fan says the latter it is not reader- friendly;) all of Doreen Fernandez books (Kilawin i particularly like because it says much about what can be found all over the island – but maybe that is more Ed Alegre). I did not see Signature Dishes of the Philippines by Sony Florendo, that too is a good cook book.
I too read cookbooks as I read novels and travelogues and I do cook those that i find interesting from the reading.

Many cookbooks in the bookstores in the Philippines are indeed not kitchen tested, you may find such atrocius combination of ingredients as 5 cups coconut milk and 1/2 cup rice for a champorado, my daughter-in-law who is only starting to learn to cook tried it and my 6 year old grandson said: “oh it sort of made me want to vomit after” Or an adobo recipe for 1 chicken and 1 cup vinegar.
Id like to know where to get a copy of Fishes of the Philippines, ( I had a a yellowed, brittle copy of a monograph printed by the US Wildlife when the Philippines was still a colony ( not to say it no longer is in some ways), which i retrieved from someone’s garbage and photocopied . With the handling, the pages of the original just disintegrated!!

Too long comment, got carried away. Thanks just recently discovered this blog.

Best regards

By: Marketman

Marketman — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 02:32:44 +0000

marlazz, I did a pre-release review of the book, Memories of Philippine Kitchens, here. I also ate in and wrote about their restaurant, Cendrillon, here. the book is also in the stack photographed above. :)

By: marlazz

marlazz — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:37:54 +0000

You should look into ‘Memories of Filipino Kitchens’, which I recently discovered and gifted to our hosts when we where travelling. It’s authored by the chef/owner of a Filipino restaurant in NYC. It’s a cookbook but so much more.

yes, the Nora Daza book is a classic.

By: CecileJ

CecileJ — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:04:53 +0000

Lee, apicionado nga ako, may MarketMan-ia pa!

By: gemma

gemma — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:32:33 +0000

during my growing up years in davao, my mom had this ILONGGO cookbook that contained fool-proof recipes of ilonggo classics. sadly, i could not remember the author’s name(it was published in Iloilo) so my attempts in getting hold of a copy have been unsuccessful. i consider hers to be better than the rest of the filipino classics (e.g. daza, et al). i am looking forward to my copy of Assumption High School Cookbook (newly released) hoping that i would be able to find the same ilonggo dishes (the school has plenty of ilonggos) that I had during my years in the Philippines. The Ilonggo cookbook has been one of my inspirations when I pursued culinary studies in New York. Upon being prodded to do ravioli by my instructor, I could not help comparing the dish to our very own molo (and how much superior the molo is)!

By: annamanila

annamanila — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 16:02:42 +0000

I know I have some books by Doreen Fernandez (Tikim, Lnnghap), an adobo book by Eugene Gonzalez, some of the recipe books resulting from a cook fest by lemme see know …. i am sorry i can’t remember. hmmm, two sets of pinoy meal weekly planners. I don’t see any one of these now … thank you for reminding me.

First time for me here … wouldn’t have come if i were not researching on A-listed pinoy blogs. This is great. Wanna say more but i got more sites to visit. Will come back.

By: Apicio

Apicio — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:44:17 +0000

Johnny’s comments about cook/writers holding back or not disclosing the complete recipe never fails to strike a chord with me. To me there are only two kinds of published recipes, tested and untested ones. Ignore the untested ones or at least limit your gaze to its narrative or photographs. I suspect that the real tricky part with tested recipes is identifying which item in the ingredient list is critical, that one which when substituted for completely alters the shape, look and taste of the dish such as replacing chorizo with lapcheung (same rough shape but I beg your pardon, its like comparing apples and orangutans). In the procedure part, there is usually a crucial step that once skipped can cause the construction of the recipe to collapse. I instantly take kindly to cookbooks whose recipes warn you about the level of skill required. After all, baking muffin and making vol-a-vent are as far away in skill requirement as picking the notes of Chopstick from playing the Grande Valse Brilliante on the piano.

By: MegaMom

MegaMom — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:08:06 +0000

And if may add Donna A, not just friends but family who can cook for you! Good to see your post, sis! Finally crawling out of the woodwork, I see. Donna and I started with Filipino Cooking Here and Abroad. We were both living in Chicago then and although lacking in photos and very basic, what we found useful was that it gave substitutions for Pinoy ingredients one would not normally find abroad.

Maybe your next “baby” can have something similar, and also the reverse, i.e. foreign dishes with the Pinoy touch because the foreign ingredients are difficult to be had, or because that is your twist, your signature. (Kalamansi muffin and countless other MM classics.) This would make it appealing to your fans all around the world.

Bravo to Apicio for an excellent suggestion: multi-media! (Am an apicionado too, Lee, uunahan na kita. :)) Instead of a dog-eared cookbook in the kitchen, one can have a video demo playing on a laptop! Hehehe, j/k of course, printable recipe page would be far more practical.

However, I’m sure you would agree a stack of DVDs doesn’t quite have the visual and tactile impact of a stack of tomes. So as Apicio also suggested, offer both options. I would buy both!

By: noemi Dado

noemi Dado — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:33:48 +0000

I started to cook using “Let’s Cook with Nora”. And from there I just reinvented the dish. The recipe book is simple that even my non-cook helper learned to cook from it.