Stir-fry Chicken and Baguio Beans
Here is a stir-fry recipe that is neither Chinese nor Filipino but a combination of both. Chinese stir-fry veggies normally have ginger and thick sauce while I grew up with ginisang sari-saring gulay (mixed vegetables) with tomatoes and no ginger. Mom’s gulay guisado is never about high heat and meat is always cooked longer. So, I took out the ginger, retained the tomato flavor and cooked it the way I love Chinese stir-fry dishes – the thick sauce and of course, how fast we can prepare a meal this way.
I seldom get requests from readers about a recipe. 
What I had in mind actually is beef pares. This is already my 2nd attempt and my official tagatikim (food taster) thought what I did here is very similar to the one served in our favorite restaurant back home. Still we believe a stronger flavor would do the trick. My guess is star anise. I purposely omit it as we don’t really like too ‘Chinese’ tasting dish but I will definitely stir it in next time. I was also lazy to add in cornstarch to make thicker sauce so for the meantime, I will call this dish simply beef toppings. The hard-boiled egg in the photo? Well, I felt like I wanted to add some in the stew.
I’ve been experimenting with Chinese cooking wine lately since I found a bottle in a supermarket a month ago. So far it’s a hit! This was lunch last Easter Sunday. Those green roses are actually the bottom part of pechay where the stalks meet. We didn’t eat ‘em. They just look pretty next to the spareribs.
Happy Easter! So busy with giving a fresh new look to our HS class website (using 
I still have few pictures of my mom’s cooking taken during my last vacation that I want to share. Here is one of her many variations of sinigang (sour broth). Sinigang maybe cooked with fish, meat (maybe lean meat, fatty or bony parts) or shellfish. Vegetables vary depending on availability and, of course, preference. The most common souring agents are fresh sampalok (tamarind), bayabas (guava), kamias (bilimbi) or simply a pouch of sinigang mix available at the store nearest you.
The staple of the Filipino food is rice but for the sake of variety I sometimes prepare bread or noodle or corn for the much needed daily carbohydrate intake. Here, I pan-fried few processed fish fillets and served them with pasta tossed in olive oil, parsley, Italian herbs and parmesan cheese – another easy to prepare dish as well as a truly mouth-watering meal!
I’ve been dreaming of cooking chicken mami (noodle soup) since I had 
For my kind of work, I read or browse tru mags and books or surf the net for inspiration before I start conceptualizing for new designs. It goes without saying that I also do this to plan ahead about what to cook. As I always check out fellow pinoy food blogs for recipes I haven’t tried or the ones that seems forgotten, I found one about stuffed pusit (squid) that teleported me back to my dad’s old office when I was a little girl. There was some kind of a celebration, must be the opening of the office itself or the company’s anniversary, and one of mom’s main dish was a huge stuffed squid.
I remember those days a long time ago every time we were in a Chinese restaurant I always wonder how they can cook the meat so tender in such a short time whilst the vegetable remain crisp and the sauce thick and bubbly. I observed firsthand a real northern Chinese cook their veggies (of course, ate Vi our enterpreter here), tried few stir-fry recipes I found online, discovered the technique myself and now I couldn’t stop experimenting w/ different vegetables.
I steamed quite a large piece of fish in soy sauce yesterday and still have some leftover that I decided to make fish balls. Here’s the recipe…