one filipino dish a week

In the October issue of Saveur magazine breakfast is the main story and as usual the Filipino diet is not mentioned (but slowly we’ll get to them). Champorado is my addition to the issue. One word says it all… chocolate. What more can you ask for? Chocolate in the morning. Being the Filipino that I am I find comfort in rice. It is the warm embrace from someone you love. And rice is the canvas that makes the flavors of the food shine. What better way to start painting your day on a canvas of a chocolate embrace. Champorado may not be eaten with the daily morning news but it is that one tattered shirt in your closet that everytime you wear it you ask yourself why you don’t wear it more often. I may be waxing serious poetic over champorado but chocolate + rice = scrumptioulscence and you know you wanna try some.

Here’s how you can make it:
1 cup glutinous rice
3 cocoa tablets (tablea)
brown sugar - the more the better
milk

If you do not have the Philippine tablea available where you are, then 100% cocoa unsweetened baking chocolate will do the trick.

1. Boil the rice in 4 cups of water. Stir constantly so the rice won’t stick.
2. Once the rice has softened start to add the cocoa and continue stirring to incorporate the chocolate.
3. Add sugar to your desired sweetness
4. Serve it up in a bowl with some milk. For a true Filipino experience use evaporated milk.

Eat Filipino Food!

Friday night is a moment to celebrate every week. The Girl and I take a moment each Friday to celebrate and reflect on the triumphs and challenges of the week over a meal either at home or at a restaurant. It doesn’t have to be anything grand just a meal together to savor the moments of the past week and to just enjoy each other’s company. This week was dinner in and it was my turn to make dinner. Being the busy bees that we are there isn’t much time to make dinner even on a Friday. This meal that I whipped up doesn’t take much time at all.

Pork Chop
2-4 center cut pork chops (about 0.5 to 1 inch thick)
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup white sugar
3 tbsp brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp olive oil

In a 1 gallon ziploc plastic bag fill it 3/4 with water and dissolve the kosher salt and white sugar. Add the pork chops and brine for 1 hour. Brining the pork chops make a tremendous difference and makes the pork chops juicy. Pork in the US has gotten leaner over the last 20 years and with less fat it makes tougher pork.

After brining, pat dry each of the pork chops with a paper towel. On one side of each of the pork chops, coat with brown sugar. With the sugar side down, place the chops in a cold pan. Drizzle a little olive oil over the chops. Heat up the pan and within a couple of minutes the pork chops should start to sizzle. Once browned (about 5-7 minutes) turn the chops over and put the heat on low and cover. Cook the chops until it reads 150 degrees in an instant read thermometer. Let it rest covered for about 5 minutes before serving.

Garlic Fried Rice
lots of garlic minced
1 scallion chopped 1 inch long
left over white rice
salt to taste

Garlic fried rice is the perfect way to jazz up leftover rice. The key is to have a generous amount of garlic. Simply saute the garlic until light brown add the rice. Salt to taste. Don’t forget to salt! I’ve had lots of garlic rice that just lacks seasoning. Garnish with scallions.

What’s a meal without a drink? To round out this Friday night affair we had a bottle of Albarino, which is a white wine from Spain. I’ve become big fan of Albarino all thanks to Gary Vaynerchuk. I just like how this wine pairs up with a lot of different food and not to mention Filipino food. Lastly, Albarino is pretty reasonably priced so I can’t complain about that.

All in all it was another successful Friday night dinner. And I hope you take some time this week to spend a few minutes with someone you love over a good meal.

Eat Filipino Food!

While in Danao, we were very fortunate that The Girl’s neighbor Manang Clarita is a really good cook. First, she showed us to make puso. Then one lovely afternoon she showed us how to make puto maya. Puto maya is one of those kakanin or what I call awesome rice dishes to stuff your face! It is cooked in a claypot steamer (above). Yes, that is a claypot… Nang Clarita’s claypot has been well seasoned. She told us that you can use a regular steamer but just make sure to do something about the holes because the regular steamers holes are too big. I’ll have to give this a shot and let you know what works for me.

To make puto maya you will need the following ingredients:

1/2 kilo pilit (sticky rice) and tapol (black rice)
3 cups coconut milk
1/4 kilo sugar (this was an approximation… the number seems really big to me but the little plastic bag of sugar did seem like it was about 2 cups worth)
1 tablespoon salt
3 inch piece of ginger sliced thinly sliced

To prepare the coconut milk mixture: boil coconut milk. Add sugar, salt & ginger. Reduce the liquid until it is rich and thick (espiso).

Soak the sticky rice for about 3 hours. In a steamer lined with cheesecloth pour the pre-soaked sticky rice and black rice. Cover until cooked. Once the rice is done sprinkle the coconut milk mixture and folding the rice inside the pot. Continue adding the coconut milk mixture until desired texture is achieved.

Let the rice cool down a little bit. Rip banana leaves into pieces about as wide as your palm.

Twist the leaves and create a small triangular pouch.

Scoop in the rice (remember to take the ginger out! which I obviously did not).

Fold the top flap and voila! Puto Maya!

This is a wonderful afternoon snack or breakfast. The puto maya tasted amazing! The ginger is the key to the ingredient list because it gives off that aroma and distinctive taste. Puto maya goes extremely well with Filipino hot chocolate!

Eat Filipino Food!

In the Philippines, puso or hanging rice is a Visayan thing if not a truly Cebuano thing. You won’t really see this in other parts of the country. It’s a pretty ingenious way of making rice portable. The lukay or young coconut leaves are weaved in such a way that it creates a little bag for the rice. When I was looking around online (aka wikipedia) there are apparently different shapes that are made for puso. I’m only familiar with the heart-shaped version which is the most common that can be seen. I imagine that the name puso came from the heart-shaped version because puso means heart in Filipino. The English term “hanging rice” pretty much comes from the fact that after it’s cooked the individual bags of rice are tied and hung up for storage like this (although the shape in that picture is called binaki or frog-style).

I associate puso with the beach and street food. We always used to bring puso and bbq when we went to the beach. The coconut leaves give a wonderful fragrance to the rice which makes it a perfect pair with the smokiness of the pork bbq. Eating puso and bbq with wrinkled hands and salty taste buds after hours of playing in the water… If only I can go back to those wonderful childhood memories.

Manang Clarita (who sells foodstuffs for a living) taught The Girl and I how to make puso. Although, she was trying her hardest to slow down it’s pretty much second nature for her so it’s still really fast for a novice.

Once you have all the coconut leaves formed you put rice, close it up by knotting the open end, and then boiling the rice. Make sure to only fill it up half way because the rice expands!

Eat Filipino Food!