The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
Milkshakes, slushies, aguas frescas, lassis and fruit shakes. This section is about the art of mixing fruits, fruit juices, milk, spices and herbs, and turning them into refreshing drinks.
In the Philippines, melon usually refers to the cantaloupe or rockmelon. That’s about the only variety found in the market for ages because it is the variety that is grown locally. It was not only until the last decade that imported honeydews, sugar melons and hami melons started to make an appearance and gained some ... (more)
I’ve been dreaming of making this for weeks. But since we started making dulce de leche in a pressure cooker (yes, with nothing blowing up!), the caramel has come out firm and no longer pourable. If you’re familiar with mudslides, you’d know that the syrup used to create the mudslide effect should be pourable so ... (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)
When Speedy saw Luke Nguyen whip up a dragon fruit shake in his show, he wasted no time in buying a dragon fruit to replicate the drink at home. When he cut the dragon fruit in half, to his surprise, he found the flesh to be the same color as the skin. The skin of ... (more)
With the mint in our garden now growing profusely once again, I can pick the leaves with abandon to mix into drinks. Not just for the minted green tea that Alex likes so much but for cold drinks too. If you’ve gone through the archive of drinks recipes, you might have come across my cucumber ... (more)
When Speedy said “mango-ginger”, I have to admit that I was a bit apprehensive. Although I am used to combining fruits with spices (mostly, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves), I wasn’t at all sure how the mango and ginger combination would work. Amazingly, mango and ginger did go well together. Mango lassi is good; mango-ginger lassi ... (more)
Lassi is essentially a yogurt-based drink that contains spices. Question: if a drink contains yogurt, plus milk, and has no spices whatsoever, is it still a lassi? Giada de Laurentiis thinks and says so. I’m not so sure how correct she is in the strict sense (I don’t add spices to my mango lassi either) ... (more)
When I first posted a recipe for watermelon smoothie, I used a regular watermelon and the recipe included instructions on scraping off the seeds. That was in 2004 and you can see that old recipe on page two. Seedless watermelons started making an appearance in the local market not long after that. Although the first ... (more)
Inspired by a drink concocted by Bob Blumer in his Surreal Gourmet show, Speedy substituted lemon for lime as lime is not always easy to find in supermarkets (our lime tree is fruitless these days). This drink is definitely low-fat and low-sugar since no milk nor cream is used and the only sugar you get ... (more)
Lassi is a popular drink in many South Asian countries. It is made with yogurt, milk and spices. The sweet version, often served cold, has fruits added. Mango lassi is the most well known among the many varieties of sweet lassi and it is very popular in Singapore and Malaysia. It is easy enough to ... (more)
Marikeños like to say that waknatoy is a dish unique to Marikina. Well, … »»
Last month, I discovered an alternative natural coffee sweetener -- coco … »»
The classic adobong sitaw gets more than a superficial facelift with the … »»
After a quick trip to the market, Speedy checked his Facebook account, … »»
Still experimenting with alternative methods of cooking, after using the … »»
If you're looking for the easiest cocktail drink recipe ever, you just … »»
A simple, easy and very tasty pasta dish that you can cook in one pan. … »»
I can't resist a good recipe when I come across one. I was browsing food … »»
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 »)
It has a graham cracker crust and it is baked but at a lower temperature … (more...)
If you Google "melon cocktail", you'll find that there are two categories. … (more...)
According to Tastefully Done, age means deep fried and dashi, of course, is … (more...)
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...)
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