one filipino dish a week

Risotto has a certain kind of mystic. At least to me it does. It’s something that I’ve only eaten at a restaurant. So it has to be complicated that only trained chefs can make it right? Well here it is, my first attempt at making risotto. As I’m looking at different recipes on how to make it I say to myself, I know it’s rice but the only way I make rice is in a rice cooker. Press a button and when the beep goes off you’re done. This one not so ’set it and forget it’ kind of procedure. Why can’t Ron Popeil come up with an easy solution for this? It’s time to over come some unsubstantiated fear of not being able to make it right and just get it done. Here’s what I did…
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Day 27 of being vegetarian. How has it been? It surprisingly hasn’t been extremely hard. However, there have been days, including today, where I was walking on the street, and all of a sudden you got a whiff of a burger on a grill and images of a juicy burger permeated through my thoughts. Ohhhh maaaaan! The urge to take a detour and get one was so hard to let go. (damn you schnippers!) But! Once you set your mind to something, I think it’s easier to let go of the urges. Note that I said easier and not easy. The only thing that I’ve lapsed on is that I used fish sauce in a couple of dishes. Which according to T doesn’t apply to our fast. I think we bent the rules there a little bit but we created the rules so I don’t really know how valid this whole thing is. We’ve also ordered in from the chinese food take-out and who knows what they put in there.
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I come home and I see T on the couch relaxing and she looks at me and says, ‘I made the dinner that we planned to have tonight. We’re having monk food.’

I was utterly confused at this statement, ‘Huh?!? I thought we were having split peas with spinach?’

‘Yes’, she said. ‘It’s like monk food.’
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Yay mongos! T and I rejoice every time we have it. It’s our favorite. I’ve always liked mongos growing up. Unlike my love - hate - love cycle relationship with eggplant, mongos has always stayed true. What is mongos? Well it’s apparently something that originated in India -thanks wikipedia. These are small beans green in color that makes lovely soups! I do associate mongos with lent because it is what we ate when I was growing during the lent season when no meat is allowed on Fridays. It’s perfect over white rice (but what isn’t?). Trust me Filipinos eat everything with white rice. I think the texture really has a lot to do with the character of the dish. True to most Filipino dishes there’s a few variations. I highlighted some common variations.
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Tonight I had an excellent dinner prepared by T. This is the first vegetarian paella I’ve had and it was fantastic! We bought a paella pan the other week and wanted to try it as soon as we could. This isn’t a traditional paella since there’s no meat but this was fantastic. Growing up I remember eating paella only on special occasions and it always had seafood. We’ll have to just to revisit paella in the future and cook the different versions.

This had fantastic flavor and texture. The contrast of the rice and crunchy cashews, the taste of the olives, bell peppers and the spice from the chili powder were great. Here’s how she made it…there’s an overwhelming amount of ingredients but don’t be afraid that’s why it tastes good.
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