The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
Ground pork and lightly fried firm tofu cubes make the base for this tasty and fast-cooking curried dish. If you aren’t into tofu, you can omit it. I added tofu because I love tofu and I find that an otherwise too-heavy dish becomes so much lighter and easier to digest when tofu replaces part of ... (more)
First of all, curry is a blend of spices, not a single spice. It is primarily used in South Asian and Southeast Asian cooking although it is fast becoming popular outside of these regions. What spices are included in the mix varies from cook to cook and region to region. For the home cook, the ... (more)
I never liked milk in my tea. I always felt that the milk drowned out the delicate flavors of the tea. It wasn’t until Alex developed an affinity for milk tea and learned how to prepare it at home that I slowly got over my aversion for milk in my tea. So much so that ... (more)
Each time I posted photos of Sam’s homemade sushi, there would inevitably be requests for the recipes among the comments. I really don’t know how I can give any recipe since Sam rarely follows any but often uses just about whatever she finds in the fridge. She doesn’t follow traditional combinations of ingredients, she’s bold ... (more)
The 4th Earl of Sandwich did not invent the sandwich as the practice of placing meat between slices of bread is much, much older than him. In the English language, however, the first time the meat-between-bread food item was mentioned in writing, it was attributed to the 4th Earl of Sandwich who preferred to eat ... (more)
It has always been my opinion that to become a good cook, one has to be confident about his skills and taste. And by that, I don’t mean professional training. No, not at all. Rather, I mean the ability to think outside the box, to never feel limited by the lack of access to certain ... (more)
For the longest time, Masoya was my preferred brand of tofu. If it wasn’t in stock when I went grocery shopping, I wouldn’t buy tofu at all. Then, Masoya became harder and harder to find in the grocery until, finally, I decided to try another brand. I went through all the available brands and chose ... (more)
Lemon and pineapple often figure in Asian stir fried dishes. Oranges make a more rare appearance perhaps because orange segments easily disintegrate over high heat and constant stirring. But that can be prevented, or at least minimized, by adding the orange segments at the last minute. The previous post about how to segment an orange ... (more)
Segmenting an orange can mean either of three things. First, you peel the fruit by pulling off the skin then you you separate the segments by prying them apart. Then, you cut through the pith and eat the flesh inside. Depending on the variety of orange the pith can be thin and fine that it ... (more)
Speedy isn’t a huge fan of pasta but he had two helpings of tonight’s dinner. Chunks of chicken fillets, bacon, macaroni and colorful veggies were mixed with condensed mushroom soup to make this one pot dish. It’s thick, rich, creamy and mushroom-y. And it cooks in 30 minutes flat. Scoop and serve with buttered toast ... (more)
I have a daughter, Sam, who, except during summer and Christmas breaks, is … »»
From the moment he saw the recipe and visual guide for making a cowboy's … »»
This is Speedy's version of a dish that his mother used to cook as a way of … »»
I can't resist a good recipe when I come across one. I was browsing food … »»
So, I mentioned the other day that I made a huge pot of broth by simmering … »»
I've been dreaming of making this for weeks. But since we started making … »»
If I had access to kale, I'd have used a bunch in lieu of white cabbage. If … »»
In a post I published four and a half years ago, I mentioned that everyone … »»
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 »)
Okra has a bad reputation in our house. So bad a reputation that I'm the … (more...)
When I first came across this spinach recipe in The New York Times health … (more...)
This is an updated version of a recipe originally published on September … (more...)
In the Philippines, melon usually refers to the cantaloupe or rockmelon. … (more...)
A one-pot dish that's a breeze to prepare. The sausage meat makes the broth … (more...)
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