foods at home

While pork doesn’t receive much favor from some people, it’s still I think the most preferred source of protein. With pork, there are many recipes that can be concocted. Filipinos love sweet, sour, with saltiness and spicy foods. That is why for today I decided to cook pork sisig. My wife reminded me many times to buy some ingredients for pork sisig. With no apparent reasons, I couldn’t recall what took me so long before I remembered her plea. Aha! It’s because I don’t know how to cook pork sisig. If it’s not of her instruction I wouldn’t be able to arrive at this kind of recipe.

Pork sisig requires a little patience. The process is longer than other pork recipes (except of course for lechon). It needs boiling, grilling, and mixing all the ingredients. Seemingly simple but it’s a tedious task (maybe because it’s my first time). All ingredients complement one another for the taste just like in any other foods that we cook. However, to enhance it’s taste, pork sisig must be spicy. I put some hot chili on it to make it really hot.

Mmmmm… yummy! Truly a member of the foods at home group.

When it comes to sinigang, nothing beats sinigang na malaga. It’s my favorite fish but until now I still don’t know its English name or scientific name. Nevertheless, taste matters more than the name. What I know since I first heard it from my parents, it’s malaga, sounds like dalaga (young lady).

The fish’s tastiness has direct correlation with its price. Ordinary laborers could hardly afford this kind of fish, unless times like there is a good supply of the fish, price drops a bit. I am already a professional but I hesitate to buy this fish because of its price. In this post, however, I decided to cook and serve sinigang na malaga because my family for few weeks had not had sinigang. In the last few days, we dined on dry recipes. This time it is soupy and delicious.

Truly sinigang na malaga is a certified food at home!

Appetizers come in various forms. A simple chili or pepper can serve as an appetizer for many people. What I understand with appetizers is they boost your appetite for food like becoming monstrous to it. My post today is my favorite appetizer. This is the best time of the year to make a salad like this. All you need are tomatoes, green mangoes, shrimp paste, white onions, and hot chili. Tomatoes have decreased in price significantly during February so you can enjoy it many times of the day. Mangoes’ supply also increased during the month. White onions have also proliferated.

What an appetizing way to start a lunch or dinner. The sour taste of mango and tomato is complemented with the onion’s taste. The saltiness of shrimp paste makes it a real Filipino food. Hot chili makes it more palatable. Try this appetizer at home or anywhere you are. You’ll never regret with the effort. It’s really worth it.

Enjoy!

Being considered as one of the anti-cancer diets, broccoli is irresistibly healthful and palatable. This vegetable is truly umami (the 5th basic taste which means delicious). The price of this vegetable like any other goods in a market economy depends much on the interaction between demand and supply (sounds technical). This early January of 2012, I am pleased that this nutritionally packed food drops in price like crazy. I am gung ho.

Lately, the vegetable was made available on the sidewalk. I was planning for a dinner menu when one vendor shouted the price. Without hesitation I decided on immediately to have a chicken liver & gizzard broccoli for dinner. Why chicken? Broccoli is very popular with beef. That was the first plan too. Yet, with no time to shop for beef and chicken was an arm reach away, I went for chicken broccoli.

The recipe was simple. It’s just like cooking a chop suey recipe while removing all other vegetables and leaving the broccoli alone. I made it sure that it was crunchy and not to overdo the vegetable. It’s truly an authentic member of the foods at home group.!

They say bitter melon is a healthful food. It doesn’t cure diabetic patients but it could regulate their blood sugar. I know several friends who are diabetics and maintain a good appetite for this vegetable. Before, this vegetable had felt bitterness from many people. They avoided or even refused to eat because of its taste. Some had tried but squeezed the bitter melon to extract the bitter taste which made the bitter melon became devoid of nutritional value.

sweet bitter melon

My wife who’s not really a fan of bitter melon does something different about it in a palatable way. She makes bitter melon sweet. It sounds oxymoron but that’s what happens when she cooks sweet bitter melon in egg and tomatoes. She adds some sugar to make it sweet. The effect is good– we could eat bitter melon together. But I preferred it very bitter, the bitter the melon, the tastier for me.

I have noticed that in my last few posts I became a fan of bangus. If only I could change this website from foodsathome.com to bangus.com I’d do it. Well, bangus (milk fish ) is not satiating for some (I think I’m of of those). This fish is also versatile. There are maybe more than 100 ways to cook bangus. I know only a handful of it. One of them is this post. I have missed paksiw na bangus.

The reason why it took years before I cooked this recipe again (I stopped it 3 years ago) is my wife doesn’t like it. She hates cooked vinegar. She loves vinegar as a sauce for her favorite fish ball or tokneneng but not when it is cooked especially in a paksiw. The secret (no longer a secret because of this blog) of a delicious paksiw na bangus is having the freshest ingredients (it’s not a secret, everybody knows that and true to almost all recipes).

Bangus must be the choicest, choose bangus Dagupan.

Shrimps are usually caught from rivers. Shrimps’ supply has increased dramatically this year. This increase is partly due to the improvement made for the rivers. Fish pens have been eradicated. This is the campaign of the Pangasinan government to save the rivers. Despite increase in supply, the price of shrimps remained the same. It might fluctuated from time to time in the previous months, but basically it is very stable.

Shrimps have been my favorite seafood. It’s versatile. You can eat it raw (jumping salad) or you can simply fry it fatless with only salt as a seasoning. When it is fresh, the taste is deliciously different. The prices of shrimps depend largely on their sizes and if they are alive or not. Very tiny shrimps can be used to make shrimp paste or salted shrimps. Large shrimps can be cooked as sinigang na hipon.

I am grateful that I am not allergic to shrimps. Some people like my sister have allergies to seafood including shrimps. When they would eat shrimps their skin like fried shrimps becomes reddish in color. Shrimps can also be used as meat seasoning for vegetables instead of chicken or pork.

Enjoy shrimps in your meal!

I can’t eat breakfast early in the morning, my appetite is missing. Maybe because I sip my coffee every 5:00am and nibble with some bread (for others they call that breakfast, for me breakfast or any major meal must have rice with it). Many also believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day ( I agree more or less but I usually eat more on dinner). My appetite goes back around 9:00am or a little later in the morning.

In this post I cooked daing na dilis and fried eggs. This meal is hardly for kings. It’s very ordinary and commonly served in household with average to low income. My wife doesn’t like this before but now she’s asking for more (well, taste and preferences change over time). Just like the taste for entertainment, clothing, and others. In the Philippines, a recent movie made it in the box office and broke all records in the industry. The star was a gay. In sports, Manny Pacquiao has changed also a bit on his performance in the ring in his fight with Morales. Ticketamerica.com has a large selection of college basketball tickets for nebraska cornhuskers, oaklahoma and oaklahoma state ncaa basketball seating, maps, directions and more. Check these links:

nebraska cornhuskers mens basketball tickets

oklahoma sooners mens basketball tickets

oklahoma state basketball tickets

For my last two posts, bangus (milk fish) has been my favorite. I agree with my friend I mentioned in one of those posts that bangus could be a fish for all seasons. I’ve been foraging with fish lately a little frequent than before. My cousin in Canada encouraged me to eat more fish. In the November 2011 Men’s Health issue, fish was included in the top 10 of most healthful foods.

Sinigang na Bangus

In this post, I cooked sinigang na Bangus, a very Filipino recipe. There are many sinigang in the Filipino cuisines and sinigang na bangus is on the top of my list especially if the bangus is from Dagupan City. Bangus Dagupan is incomparable to other banguses in the world.

Sinigang is sour and salty in taste. Every sinigang should have tomoatoes, tamarind soup base or better yet natural tamarind, green chili, onions, and more importantly green leaves of pechay or kangkong. If you have all of these, you’ll have a perfect food at home. If you’re interested with the recipe you can email me at the email address on the About page.

When you’re not sure what to do, leave it to experts. This is apt with my post on relyenong bangus. I am amenable I really don’t how to make relyenong bangus. I love to eat it, but behind its simplicity is complexity. It’s easy to consume than to produce (that is almost always true to all dishes). I bought this one from a co-worker (sounds like construction workers). She has engaged in selling (almost everything) for several years already. A woman, an entrepreneur. But relyenong bangus is not her own doing, the master behind this masterpiece is her mother.

I have tasted several versions of relyenong bangus but this one passed my not-sooo-meticulous palate. One time I interviewed my co-worker about how to cook relyenong bangus. She made simple answers to my queries but difficult to execute. If I’ll be learning how to make relyenong bangus, maybe it’ll take me many years to master it (if I could master it at all).

The greatest factor next to the process of making relyenong bangus is the bangus itself. This bangus is from Dagupan. Dagupan bangus is the tastiest bangus in the world!