Picadillo Torta

Lasang Pinoy 15: Giniling Galore

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LP15: Recycled, Reloaded

What do you do with leftover food? Everyday cooking has made me a bit of an expert in calculating how much we can consume and which dish is a hit that I seldom have leftovers. But of course it doesn’t happen all the time. Fine. Yet I don’t think I could throw away a good and decent portion of food without feeling guilty for the hungry street children and leftovers aren’t as appetizing the second time around so a makeover is usually the case. One way of being creative is to camouflage it as an ingredient to a new dish. Usually I cut pieces of meat (like adobo) or vegetables, and use them as ingredient to fried rice the next morning for breakfast. A stir-fry vegetable dish could be toppings to fried noodles. I think of fish balls when there is leftover steamed fish. What’s left of sinaing na tulingan can be made into tuna pasta or tuna omelet. Don’t be surprised that I even made something out of take-away beef rendang!


An obvious way, of course, is the omelet. It’s a great way to hide a multitude of leftovers. But before that let me start with the original giniling recipe. Giniling, which literaly translates to “minced” (sometimes naughtily called gumiling), is basically a saute of minced meat with potatoes and spices. It’s no secret that I spent sometime cooking carinderia food as a teenager and this dish is common in turo-turos. Again, as I often like to highlight, carinderia’s ‘ordinary’, uncomplicated, inexpensive food doesn’t necessarily mean unclean or unhealthy. But, yes, a commercial version doesn’t normally include raisins, carrots and bell pepper.


And so the next day, giniling would still be great just fried crispy but I decided to make aubergine omelet. This is something very similar to tortang talong but short of becoming relleno (stuffed aubergine). Great for Sunday breakfast!


Here’s a link I found about making the perfect omelet.

Lasang Pinoy 15

The round-up!

Picadillo photo updates:

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Iska
I am not a professional cook. My only claim to having a culinary background is a short stint as my dad’s teen ‘sous chef’ in his carinderia ages ago. Dad ran small eateries since I was a young kid - serving standard ‘turo-turo’ food ranging from the likes of menudo, adobo, pritong isda, dinuguan, binagoongan, bopis, munggo, pinakbet and giniling to merienda fares like goto, ginataan, pancit bihon, halu-halo and saging con yelo.

My father, a farmer in his hometown before working his way to becoming an accountant, definitely influenced my cooking in a lot of ways than I thought. My siblings and I were raised in a backyard full of fruit trees and vegetable garden. We spent weekends and the summer breaks running around with ducks, chickens, goats and pigs. I had wonderful memories of gathering eggs, butchering chickens, selling vegetables and the sweet aroma of preserved fruits. But my love for art led me to a degree in Architecture. Just few months after getting my license, I went abroad and lived independently at age 23. Definitely no maid, no cook, and a totally different food culture. Along the way I met lots of friends and spent what seemed a lifetime learning new tricks and recipes.

Now living in Auckland, I am a work-from-home mum who juggles time between work, fun and family - in pursuit of work-life balance. No matter how busy I am, I love the idea of cooking for my family. My blog chronicles home cooking greatly influenced by life outside my home country from Southeast Asia to Beijing and Auckland. And most of the time, being busy also means easy (sometimes quick), affordable meals.

16 thoughts on “Lasang Pinoy 15: Giniling Galore

  1. Hi, Iska. Both dishes are great favorites over at our house. The only diff is that we call giniling picadillo at our house. It’s what my maternal grandmother called it, so the name’s been stuck to this day.

  2. uy, also my all-time favourite! maski anong oras ok yan . . . whether reheated leftover picadillo or the torta! thank you very much aling iska for joining lasang pinoy 15!

  3. hi iska, picadillo and torta are just some of my faves. in fact they’re almost staples at home specially when mom is not around and the maid is left to her own devices.

  4. hi iska, i cooked pork giniling last night accdg. to your recipe. happy ako with the outcome. although, yours looks a lot better on pics. :D

    btw, i took the liberty to post your recipe (with proper credits and link to your blog) on my cook blog, where i keep my recipe collection for future references. i hope you don’t mind. :)

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