one filipino dish a week

This is my ideal summer salad. It’s refreshing, simple yet complex, balanced, and most importantly delicious. I’m not quite sure where it got its name but this is the recipe from my aunt and that’s what she calls it. She makes this for parties and it’s the one that’s always gone first.  It’s really quite hard to get too excited over a salad but this is good. I suppose that’s where the ‘jolly’ part of the name came from. The ‘jiffy’ part is a little bit of a misnomer because this isn’t so quick to make. Maybe it’s just that this salad makes you so happy that you eat it quickly — jolly jiffy. Even better!

Here’s how I made it (serves 20 ppl):
4 cucumbers julienne
2 jars pickles julienne
3 carrots julienne
3/4 lb cooked ham strips
1 can pineapple tidbits
2 fuji apples julienne
sharp cheddar cheese strips
1 cup mayo

If you’ve never julienned anything in your life and you make this salad you’ll be an expert by the end of it. Julienne all ingredients make sure they all look uniform Combine ingredients, dress with mayo, salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately. The sourness, sweetness and saltiness all play together very very nicely. The balance of flavors takes the edge off of the summer heat.  I made this for a church picnic and it had a good response. The next party you have try something different.

Eat Filipino Food!

On a day like today, I wish I was able to sit down in the afternoon and have some bingka for a snack. Bingka is a rice cake (kakanin in Tagalog). There’s several versions of it in the Philippines and a few other Southeast Asian countries have their own versions as well. This particular one is made with fire on top and bottom of the rice cake. This is a perfect afternoon snack. In the Philippines it’s common to know when the your suki (the person you always buy from) will have their goods ready. You’ll know that for a particular store they’re usually ready around 3pm and there’ll be a line to buy.

To me bingka is more texture than taste. It tastes slightly sweet and creamy but the toasted crust and the pasty texture of the inside is what I really like about it. I have not made this yet but I’m looking for somone to teach me how to.

On a day like today, I wish I was able to sit down in the afternoon and have some bingka for a snack.

Eat Filipino Food!

In my previous lumpia post I didn’t have much luck with the wrapper. I was at the Asian store and decided to try out the different brands that they had. I think the right wrapper AND sauce will make this dish amazing.

1. Wei Chuan - I think this is the brand of wrapper that I see everywhere in Asian stores and pretty common. As I looked into the details of the wrapper it’s made in the USA so that explains it. This is a fairly decent size wrapper with a pretty good thickness that looks like it will hold up.

Ingredients: enriched whear flour, water, salt, soybean oil, sodium of pholyphosphate & carbonate, mono and di-glycerides, polysorbitan esters of stearates, lecithin, citric acid.

2. Spring Home - I was very interested that this was smaller size. I wanted to figure out if making smaller rolls will affect how it cooks and in effect the taste. I looked more closely at the label and this is made in Singapore by Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing Ltd. The wrapper itself was pretty close to what the Wei Chuan was but not as “strechable.”

Ingredients: wheat flour, water, coconut oil, salt

3. Pacific Isles - I’ve never seen this before until now. It says “Lumpia Wrapper” in HUGE letters so there’s no way I wasn’t going to try this one out. This is actually made in the Philippines. These kinds of things may be more common in the West coast but I don’t see this often here. This is the wrapper that stands out from the rest. It is not like any of the other two. It is round and not a smooth texture.

Ingredients: wheat flour, water and salt.

What I found extremely interesting is that out of the 3 wrappers the one made in the US is the one that has the longest list of ingredients. and preservatives? Probably explains the strength of the wrapper. I don’t really know what all those other “non-food” ingredients are. I wonder if it’s just that the FDA requires them to label and the other countries don’t have to. In any case to wrapping we go…

I made the vegetable lumpia similar to my previous post but without the tofu. I made a few of each wrapper. In terms of being consistent the Wei Chuan and Spring Home we comparable. Each wrapper had the same size and the quality of each wrapper was pretty much the same. The Pacific Isles however was pretty much all over the place. The wrappers were sticking to each other and they were not all the same size, they tear easily and the wrapper was not smooth. Even at the small size picture you can clearly tell the difference.

I also wrapped a couple of the small wrappers a different way. In the lower right hand portion of the picture I wrapped two of them straight on and not the “diamond”.

I deep fried them in a pot of canola oil at 350deg F. I finally figured out that having consistent oil temperature is the key to deep frying. Yay! Time to Eat!

Spring Home - as I was cooking the spring home the way I wrapped it the roll kept on rolling on one side and it wouldn’t cook evenly on the other side. The wrapper was good. Pretty consistent. But I don’t think it was as good as the other two. I think it was just too small. It didn’t get as crunchy as the other two. This may be better for other things but not vegetable lumpia.

Wrapping it in two different ways didn’t make a difference. It came out the same and didn’t add any crunchiness.

Pacific Isles - I did not have high hopes for this wrapper. Especially with all the problems I had with the wrapper tearing and etc. But this turned out to be pretty good. It was the crunchiest out of all of the wrappers. It had great depth. It had an almost flaky texture. Even the one that I messed up wrapping didn’t break apart and crumble into pieces. I was quite impressed at how it turned out.

Wei Chuan - No frills. And I think this is pretty consistent. I don’t think it added anything to the experience of eating the lumpia. It was ok with the crunchiness. It held up pretty good with in the deep fry.

The verdict… surprisingly I really liked the Pacific Isles but I did not like the inconsistency of the quality wrapper to wrapper. If they can have better QA and keep it consistent I would go for that wrapper. The Wei Chuan is a good solid go-to wrapper for your everyday lumpia needs. The Spring Home was a little bit too small and didn’t get the crunchiness that I would’ve liked. In the end, I ate a lot of lumpia so I’m happy.

Eat Filipino Food!

Vegetable lumpia is one of my childhood favorites. I remember my nanay would be making these and while they were wrapping the veggies, I would go into the kitchen and eat the veggies before they go in the wrapper. They would yell at me and tell me to go away because there won’t be enough to finish making the lumpia. That’s how much I enjoy vegetable lumpia. The wrapping is a very tedious part of making lumpia and it certainly becomes a gathering of a bunch of people to finish the job quicker.

I made mine with taugi (mung bean sprouts), carrots, green beans, onions and tofu. The mother goose told me that singkamas (jicama) would make it so much better but I did not find any at the store so I had to settle. Cut the veggies julienned and dice the tofu fairly small. Sautee the onions until translucent then add the carrots, green beans, jicama, and tofu. After it becomes slightly tender, lower the heat and add in the mung bean sprouts. Add the soy sauce and season to taste. Let it cool.

Once the veggies cool, wrap them in the lumpia wrapper and deep fry. A good deep fry temp is around 365-370 degress F. What I found cooking this for the first time is that the wrapper has to be sealed tight or else your veggies are going to swim away. Also, I found that the kind of wrapper is really key because of how it fries. I’m not sure how easy it is to make your own lumpia wrapper but I’d be willing to give it a try. It seems like this store bought wrapper didn’t really hold up well. I was imagining the spring rolls at Vong, Jean Georges Asian themed restaurant in NY, which has an amazing wrapper (but that’s what you expect from a Jean Georges restaurant).

The final product came out pretty much in the middle. It’s tougher to make this several step dish on a weeknight when there isn’t a lot of time. Vegetable lumpia goes well with a suka (vinegar) and garlic sawsawan (sauce). Another testament to a good lumpia wrapper is that when you dip it into the suka you’ll hear it crinkle a little bit (this particular wrapper didn’t). I’ll have to try to make this again.

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!