one filipino dish a week

It’s been a little while since I’ve made some ice cream. The ice cream maker has just been sitting there. The Girl came back from the store with some strawberries. I’m not quite sure that it’s really strawberry season yet but apparently these were from California. But they tasted sweet and good. So these must be the early season ones. I know strawberry ice cream isn’t quite a Filipino flavor but it’s one of my favorites so that’s that :).

Making homemade ice cream isn’t hard at all and you can make some pretty nice ice cream that tastes really good without all the other preservatives that the store bought ones have. The ice cream maker that I have is a Cuisinart that’s not a lot of frills but does it’s job. Decently priced at around $50 and probably cheaper if there is a sale.

Here’s how I made mine (yields about a quart):

1lb strawberries
3 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
6 egg yolks
2.5 cups of sugar
2 tsps vanilla extract
1 tsp kalamansi juice (or lime juice)

I first mixed the strawberries, 1/2 cup sugar, and kalamansi juice in a small bowl and let it macerate in the fridge for about 1 hour. I then pureed most of the strawberries and reserved some to put in as fruit in the ice cream.

For the “custard” part I did a variation of Alton Brown’s Vanilla Ice Cream. It’s really helpful having a thermometer so you can accurately tell when it’s done. I’ve done this before and ended up with an egg omelet. Once this part was done I mixed this with the pureed strawberries and let it cool in the fridge for about 3 hours.

I poured the mixture into the ice cream maker and let it do its thing. When it was about done I put in the rest of the strawberries. I refrigerated for another few hours and ate this as dessert after the lechon manok meal. Great way to end it! The only thing that wasn’t perfect about the ice cream was the strawberries pieces that I put in. They froze up and were hard as rocks. I wonder what process I need to do so that they won’t completely freeze. Anyone know?

Eat Filipino Food!

Turon
We had a few leftover ingredients so I decided to make some more mirienda delights. First up is turon. Turon is basically a banana spring roll.

To make coat the plantain with brown sugar, top it off with slices of jackfruit and roll up in a spring roll wrapper. Deep fry and voila an amazing snack. At some point in the future I would like to make my own spring roll wrapper. Anyone one out there know how to make it?

Camote Chips

Camote chips are one of those treats that I used to love as a kid. The sweetness of the camote just does it for me. The funny thing about this is that camote is known to give the people who eat it gas.

This is how I made it: thinly slice the camote. Having a mandolin would really help in this process to give you uniformly thin slices. I just used my trusty knife since I have not had a chance to go get a madolin yet. Heat up oil to 350-375 degrees F. Slide the pieces of camote on the side of the wok to avoid splattering.

Take them out when they are golden brown. Let them sit in a wire rack to cool down a little.

Sprinkle some sea salt, plate it up and serve! Delicious!

Filipinos love to snack. Mirienda is the 4th and 5th meal of the day. The Girl was making binignit and I love binignit. Binignit is a great mirienda item. Growing up this was made in my house during Good Friday. It’s an amazing afternoon snack. It’s also good on a nice cold day. This is a perfect winter afternoon snack.

For this version weused gabi (white taro), camote (sweet potato), plantains, canned langka (jackfruit), tapioca pearls, and frozen coconut milk. There are versions where cassava (yuca), ube (purple yam), saba bananas and sago are used.

The version that I remember growing up is using landang and not tapioca or sago. We used small tapioca pearls because that’s all we could find at the Asian store.

This is how we made it: first dice the root crops and the plantains. Cut the jackfruit into strips. Boil water and drop the root crops and the tapioca. Simmer until they are slightly tender. It doesn’t taste good if they are mushy either. Mix in the bananas, coconut milk, brown sugar, and vanilla extract. Simmer for a few minutes and then mix in the jackfruit.

Serve warm! Keeps you warm in a nice cold day. It tasted real good and hit the spot. I would like to try these again with fresh coconut milk, landang and ube.