The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
It was Sam who gave us our first taste of watermelon iced tea. She cut seedless watermelon into small cubes, dropped them into glasses of iced tea, gave Speedy and me each a glass and, oh wow, were we wide-eyed with surprise! So simple, so basic, so very refreshing. How could we not have thought ... (more)
We bought a pack of seafood balls and sticks — the kind one often finds at shabu-shabu restaurants. Then, I bought a pack of soup bones. When we got home, I made broth from the soup bones (like this), boiled enough Japanese noodles for four, microwaved the seafood balls and sticks, cut some vegetables and, ... (more)
The avocado was supposed to go into sushi but I cooked all the Japanese rice we had to make oyakudon. Sam looked at the lonely avocado ruefully, suggested that we make a salad with it then she commandeered my computer to search for recipes. But I didn’t need any recipe. I knew exactly how I ... (more)
It has a graham cracker crust and it is baked but at a lower temperature and without the baine marie. It has all the traditional ingredients for a cheesecake — cream cheese, cream, sugar and eggs. Yet, it is not a cheesecake. It’s a pie that is not as dense as a cheesecake yet it ... (more)
If you Google “melon cocktail”, you’ll find that there are two categories. The first is an alcoholic drink; the second is a dessert. This falls under the second category. But while most melon cocktail desserts simply used balled melon and a sprinkle of mint leaves, this is something more. Yep, the grape syrup which I ... (more)
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)
Speedy gave Alex an assignment today: do something with the mangoes in the fridge which were becoming too ripe already. Alex initially thought about a simple milkshake but wanted to incorporate gelatin in her recipe (which made me wonder if she used gelatin in her 2006 layered milk shake). I suggested that she puree the ... (more)
The mango is my favorite fruit in the whole wide world. There isn’t even a close second. Mango is the only fruit that I can eat by itself without feeling that it could be better. There is simply nothing like the soft, sweet luscious flesh that is refreshing, comforting and exhilarating all at once. Perhaps, ... (more)
I admire the Italians for their ability to turn basic pasta dough into so many shapes and sizes, then combine the noodles with all kinds of meat, seafood, sauces, vegetables and herbs to create endless dishes that taste, smell and look different from one another. I admire the Chinese for the same reasons.
I’ve seen a lot of chefs on TV cutting off a thick chunk of the pineapple’s skin to remove the “eyes.” So wasteful. Those eyes are at least a quarter of an inch deep, there’s a lot of edible flesh between the eyes and, ergo, so much of the luscious flesh gets discarded with the ... (more)
And there it goes again — the reference to the Super Bowl. This drink from The Slow Roasted Italian, called the New York Cocktail, was “invented” in honor of the New York Giants which I’ve only vaguely heard of. Categorized as a “ladies’ drink” (why, I have no idea), this is a bright-looking and fresh-tasting ... (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)
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 … »»
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