The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
I’ve always wondered how Bicol Express could be cooked with lots of chilies but without making the dish too spicy that it practically scorches the mouth and throat. The answer was so simple I wondered why I never made the connection before — scrape off the seeds and membranes of some of the chilies. Gee, ... (more)
I was on Twitter last night and there was a post by I-forgot-who with a link to a waffle photo that I wanted to eat off my monitor. The waffle was topped with slices of fresh bananas and smothered with maple-peanut butter sauce. When I woke up this morning (okay, more like noon), I told ... (more)
Rumor has it that I’m pregnant. I’m not. I just get cravings at times. Two weeks ago, after vegetables and fish for three successive days, I wanted meat in a bad way. Even I was surprised. In our family, it’s an accepted fact that Speedy is the most serious carnivore. On the second day that ... (more)
In April, 2003, I posted a tuna spring rolls recipe using cooked fresh tuna. Although I will always prefer fresh over canned, today is one day when I didn’t have time to thaw anything from the freezer as it was almost lunch time when I got out of bed. The solution? An easy dish that ... (more)
There are at least three adobong sitaw recipes in this blog — classic, spicy and herb-y, and low-fat — but, today, I came up with yet another great variation for this Filipino favorite. By adding thick coconut cream a few minutes before cooking time is up, the dish acquires a subtly sweet taste and turns ... (more)
It’s so funny that when you Google “tablea,” most of the Filipino websites that appear in the search results pages say that tsokolateng tablea translates to “cacao chocolate.” Huh? Chocolate is made from cacao so “cacao chocolate” is redundant. Tablea refers to blocks of cacao which, in Filipino cuisine, are heated with milk to make ... (more)
The longganisa (native sausage) and whole eggs combination is a Filipino favorite all-day breakfast meal. They’re usually served with rice and a simple tomato salad on the side. Instead of serving longganisa and eggs with rice, I turned them into pizza topping. The dough is homemade. So is the tomato sauce. Pizza is Italian but ... (more)
In olden times, before there were gas and electric stoves and Filipinos cooked over burning wood or charcoal, the palayok, or clay pot, was a standard cooking vessel.
The suman (rice cake) and chocolate combination is nothing unusual. In fact, it is traditional to serve suman with a cup of hot chocolate drink. This combination was carried farther when suman makers started adding chocolate bits into the rice (see my recipe for chocolate suman). And I thought… why not suman and chocolate fondue? ... (more)
If you haven’t heard of Balaw-balaw Restaurant, you might want to Google the name and search for videos of a Bizarre Foods episode aired a couple of years ago. Balaw-balaw is famous for its adobong uok (the larvae of a beetle that are as large as gold balls) and fried crickets. Sam needed to take ... (more)
I was in high school when I first learned to cook guinataang puso ng … »»
The dish that launched this blog. Literally. More than seven years ago, I … »»
The longganisa (native sausage) and whole eggs combination is a Filipino … »»
Every culture has its version of boiled meat and vegetables. So I said in … »»
No, I've never been to P.F. Chang's although I read that the U.S. food … »»
The most serious reason I missed my pressure cooker was because I love, … »»
The last time I heard the word batotoy, I was buying longganisa (native … »»
After a quick trip to the market, Speedy checked his Facebook account, … »»
Still experimenting with alternative methods of cooking, after using the … »»
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 »)
The avocado was supposed to go into sushi but I cooked all the Japanese … (more...)
Sam likes buying those frozen seafood balls in the grocery -- fish balls, … (more...)
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...)
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