The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
First of all, I apologize for the disappearance of Home Cooking Rocks! from 8.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. today, Manila time. I exceeded my bandwidth allocation and I did not find out until late in the afternoon. I had to do the house chores before turning on my computer. Bad decision especially considering that I ... (more)
If you use the keyword parenting in a Google News search, the list of results almost always include articles about parenting classes. It sounds a bit weird. Sessions where parents can share and learn from each other’s experiences sounds good but I can’t imagine a “classroom” where “teachers” teach students how to become good or ... (more)
Whenever I had a craving for apple pie in the past, I knew of only one place where I could have the real thing — Hizon’s in Manila. Of course, today, there are a lot of delis that sell apple pie but Hizon’s is still the pie place for me (not McDonald’s, for goodness’ sakes). ... (more)
Sounds unbelievable but we’re not through yet with Christmas gift wrapping. We’ve been doing it in batches. A day before each reunion or party, we wrap whatever would be distributed the following day, and so on, and so forth. We wrapped the second to the last batch of gifts this afternoon and we hope to ... (more)
An aborted trip to Hidalgo Street in Quiapo, Manila for some new camera lenses became a trip to the mall and shopping galore for kitchen stuff. My husband bought the bamboo steamers and a marinade injector for me and I bought a roasting pan so as not to experience a repeat of the Christmas Eve roast duckling disaster. I also bought a couple of loose-bottom pans for baking pies… told you I’m serious about learning how to bake, so, I’m investing on the right tools and gadgets. Next on the list is a set of springform pans and a stand mixer so that my trusty hand-held mixer can finally go on retirement. It’s actually older than my 14-year-old daughter. Imagine that! Anyway…
What’s the big deal about bamboo steamers, anyway? My father and my grandfather used bamboo steamers ONLY. I wasn’t very particular and I used metal steamers for years. Then someone told me that puto (rice cakes) and siopao (bread dumplings) won’t rise properly in a metal steamer because the condensation falls right back into the bread. Whereas, the bamboo cover absorbs the condensation. Makes sense so we went hunting for bamboo steamers.
Read the first part of this entry. The marinade injector. I included the teaspoon in the photo to give you an idea of the size of the needle which I hope is clearly visible through the packaging. I told my daughters it was for their booster shots. Of course, they didn’t believe me. But it ... (more)
My husband bought two ducklings late last week — one for Christmas Eve and the other for New Year’s Eve. I started thawing the first duckling in the fridge as early as December 23rd. On the morning of December 24th, I seasoned the bird inside out. By 4.00 p.m., I put in the oven so that it would be ready for dinner. Half an hour later, the kitchen was bathed in smoke — the kind that stings the eye. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was just roasting the duckling; I wasn’t smoking it.
I bought a pack of butterflied and filleted asohos (Sillago) with the intention of making them into fish tempura. It’s a good thing that I postponed the cooking for a few days. I saw Kylie Kwong cook shrimp tempura on her TV show the other night and she had a technique that I thought looked better than mine. So, I did what she did and we had golden, crisp fish tempura for lunch yesterday.
You can buy asohos in most wet markets but I doubt if you can get the fish monger to fillet and butterfly them for you. Most fish mongers will fillet a big fish free of charge but small fish like asohos, I’m not very sure. I bought my asohos from S&R (Congressional Avenue) and they had been skinned, filleted and butterflied beautifully.
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Casa is Spanish for house. CASA is also an acronym for Connie, Antonio, Sam and Alex. We are all surnamed Veneracion. We all love to take photos -- of anything that catches our fancy. It's a family obsession.
This is a journal of how we live, eat, learn, play and have fun. Work? Work is part of playing and having fun. Seriously.
In 2003, a time when I hadn't heard of the term "blog", I started a recipe website at cooking.houseonahill.net using a now defunct content management system that ran on ASP. Ok, never mind the geek talk, I'm sure you're not interested in that. The contents easily multiplied and, in 2004, I moved the food site to pinoycook.net. Always unhappy with the fact that the dot com versions of houseonahill and pinoycook weren't … (click here to read all »)
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