A Trip To Orchard Road

As much as I would have loved going to Singapore to have a taste of the exquisite cuisine of Orchard Road, a student's budget like mine can't possibly afford any trips for now. Not that I can't ask my parents for money, but I would rather not lest they give me a long lecture and probation on who I am going with and whatsoever doubts they can come up with.

So after a long walk around SM Megamall

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Chicken and Veggies Stir Fry

Stir fries are great when you are in such a hurry. They can be done in less than ten minutes, and you can have a hearty and tasty meal with lots of color and a little spiciness with it. It's also great with leftover chicken and extra vegetables in small amounts, that way you won't have to throw away anything.
We still have a cup of uncooked shredded cabbage left from cooking pancit canton for

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Five-Spice Meatballs in Sweet and Sour Sauce

Meatballs are really fun to eat most especially if they're accompanied with different kinds of sauces or dips, or perked up with herbs and spices that deliberately distinguishes your meatballs from the ordinary ones that we always find on top of our tables.

For this recipe, I used five-spice powder. It is a blend of five spices, namely star anise, cinnamon, ground pepper, ground cloves, and

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Homemade Sweet Chili Sauce

It's just like the sweet chili sauce you buy from the grocery store. Orange, slightly thick, with the right amount of spicy tang and sweetness that complements pork and fish dishes perfectly. The ingredients are quite easy to find, and I buy them from SM Hypermarket mainly because it carries many ingredients that other grocers don't have.

I made this and served it together with the Trevally (

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Chicken Spring Rolls (Lumpia)

When you're always eating red meat, chances are you intake a lot of fat in your diet unless you only buy at least 85% lean meat from your local grocer. In our home, my carnivorous brothers can devour a lot of fatty slabs of pork no matter how it is cooked. I remember my dad, in his younger years, deep frying big slabs of the well known heart attack-inducing crispy pata (deep fried to crisp

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Chocolate Covered Strawberry Mochi

I have been away from blogging for a while since this semester's schedule has started becoming more and more demanding. With our Emergency and Disaster Nursing course taking away 13 hours for 6 days in the past two weeks, not including travel time, I barely have the time and energy for blogging. Who knew a simulation emergency situation would be so much fun, and so darn tiring as well?

Even in

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Chicken and Shiitake Mushroom Stir-fry

Shiitake mushrooms are among the expensive and prized mushrooms for cooking Asian dishes. They are rather large and have an aromatic bread-like smell when dried. I have been fond of most kinds of mushrooms that my mom used to cook back then, but my favorite was this one along with the oyster mushrooms. They go really well with stir fry and risotto dishes, as well as soups when combined with the

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Chicken Meatballs

If you love meatballs with your pasta or tomato-based dishes, then this is a great way to go healthy. I made these meatballs on the sworn promise that I would have to serve some well-loved food in a healthier way. I used ground chicken breasts, cubed and processed in the blender together with an egg. You can use thigh fillets if you find the breasts a little too dry for your taste.

The great

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Korean Green Tea Latte

Green tea was believed to have antioxidants and therapeutic components, and it is widely used in traditional Japanese herbal medicine. There were quite a few fads of drinks containing green tea, but I bet that these healthy drinks don't have enough green tea in their products for the antioxidants to even reach sufficient amounts to bypass liver excretion.I was never a fan of any tea made with

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Nori Seaweed Chocolate

My sister who only comes home during the weekends brought a special kind of pasalubong this time. Usually she brings home the famous Bulacan chicharon, or pork cracklings, crunchy pork rind still clinging to some meat and a thin layer of fried fat. Deliciously unhealthy, but still a favorite anyway. This time it is a sweet tangy chocolate with a seaweed center. Who knew chocolate can blend so

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Hot and Spicy Pork Steak

Alex and I recently bought chili garlic sauce for the buffalo wings he has been asking me to make. In trying to find more ways to cook with it I thought of using pork this time, with crossed fingers and high hopes that it would turn out well. It did, actually, and Alex consumed probably almost three cups of rice with this dish. It was spicy and tasty at the same time, and the chili garlic sauce

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Chili Garlic Buffalo Wings

Who doesn't like the thick and rich sauce of buffalo wings stickily clinging onto the crisp chicken skin? Alex and I are absolute fans of these babies, and we can go all out and order a lot of these from Formaggio and Don Henrico's. Lately we haven't eaten these since Formaggio closed down unexpectedly despite their fully packed restaurant, leaving many fans in Las Pinas City downright devastated

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Chili Garlic Sauce

This dipping sauce has been a favorite in the household due to many reasons. First, when sauteed lightly, it can be served as a great spicy dipping sauce for fish and meat. It can also perk up your stir fry dishes and add the Asian twist to them without even making your stir fry spicy. It is a great addition to your barbecue marinade, and it is perfect for making buffalo wings like I do. A small

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Traditional Homemade Mango-Kani Sushi

I was talking to Alex regarding my proposed meal plan for our packed lunch this incoming semester, and as I expected, he was so thrilled about eating those Asian-inspired dishes to be served at our 3-layer bento lunch box, together with the nice sakura chopsticks I bought from Daiso. We then visited the Japanese grocery stores at Cartimar in Pasay City to buy some ingredients that would make

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Noodle-crusted Eggplant Side Dish

Along with the Korean barbecue and the mung bean sprouts side dish that was served the other night, an eggplant side dish was also cooked so that the eggplants would not be left unused in the fridge to rot. Our house helper seems to hate eggplants, and for months I have watched kilos of the vegetable going to either the trash, or the compost pit in our small garden. My sister is some sort of an

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Stir Fried Togue Recipe (Mung Bean Sprouts)

When I tried to make togue, or internationally known as mung bean sprouts, a few days ago, I was planning on using it for our bento lunch box together with the planned Mongolian chicken. Hopefully everything will indeed go as planned, because it is quite hard for me to come up with impromptu recipes to cook for our baon. Anyway, the togue was used as a side dish earlier than expected because of

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Spicy Korean Barbecue Recipe (Bulgogi)

 It was one of those Sundays when I get into a fight with my siblings. Our maid house helper has been a pain in every part of my body. She's been sneaking her friends into our house late at night for non-permitted sleep overs. She has also been playing hooky and focuses on her cell phone instead of doing what she's being paid to do. Because of her stupid addiction to her male chat-mates through

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Chinatown's Traditional Hopia Recipe (Red Mung Bean Mooncake)

Hopia is also known as bean paste-filled mini mooncakes, but somewhere along the past decade new versions of hopia has sprouted, such as the chocolate hopia and the hopia baboy (pork-filled). But the traditional way of making these Chines delicacies was to use red mung beans (sweet red monggo), pound them into a paste, then use it as filling. Served hot together with chai latte or milk tea, now

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Aji Ichiban: a Favorite Oriental Snack Shop

Whenever I pass by a store of Aji Ichiban, I try to walk fast and away from the store because I always end up bankrupt. Don't get me wrong, their prices are very reasonable indeed for such yummy treats, but I love so many of them that there was a time when I spent about Php 700 at one go. But no fast-paced walking this time, as I have only less than 400 bucks at my wallet on my way home, and my

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Fresh Lumpia, Chinatown Style!

I have always wanted to explore Binondo, also known as Chinatown, but so far I have only walked the length of Ongpin Street from Plaza Sta. Cruz. I didn't actually get any chance of eating their famous food, since the main objective of going there was to find and buy fenugreek seeds by the kilo. Unfortunately for me, we didn't find any seller of the said seeds in Ongpin, an idea given to me by a

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