As Kitchen Boss (and Cake Boss) Buddy Valastro says in his show, "nothing brings a family closer than food," this holds true in our family. Today, I prepared a meal as family and friends of the family paid us a visit in our humble abode. Which means I've been making food preps since yesterday morning (brining the meat alone takes 8 hours). My menu was courtesy of my new favorite food site, pepper.ph.
Here's today's menu:
Here's today's menu:
(images and recipes from pepper.ph)
I was going to make some dessert, but my sister brought some native kakanin.
I wasn't able to take photos of our lunch version of the meal because I forgot how fast food gets attacked by my family. I'd have to admit that the photos of the recipes given by pepper.ph don't look far from the actual output (that's good news to those who are trying to learn how to cook).
The first one to run out were the Honey Bagoong Chicken Wings. There's something addicting about the sweet and tangy combination of the honey and bagoong. The original recipe called for Thai bagoong, but I wasn't able to get one and ended up using Barrio Fiesta's bagoong. I'm pretty sure the taste would be much different if I used gkapi (Thai shrimp paste) or belachan (Malaysian shrimp paste). Note to self: stock up on gkapi and belachan.
I wasn't able to take photos of our lunch version of the meal because I forgot how fast food gets attacked by my family. I'd have to admit that the photos of the recipes given by pepper.ph don't look far from the actual output (that's good news to those who are trying to learn how to cook).
The first one to run out were the Honey Bagoong Chicken Wings. There's something addicting about the sweet and tangy combination of the honey and bagoong. The original recipe called for Thai bagoong, but I wasn't able to get one and ended up using Barrio Fiesta's bagoong. I'm pretty sure the taste would be much different if I used gkapi (Thai shrimp paste) or belachan (Malaysian shrimp paste). Note to self: stock up on gkapi and belachan.
(image from Shesimmers) | 
(image from Serious Eats) |
I also made another variation on the recipe and used potato starch instead of all-purpose flour (APF). I prefer using potato starch when frying because it gives a different level of crispness and takes a longer time to burn. The end results doesn't look as dark as those fried using APF. All-in-all, this dish ended up having female guests asking for the recipe. To which, I was more than happy to forward them to Pepper.ph.
Moving on to the next best-seller of the day, the iced tea. It goes without saying that it taste good to the point that my very picky 7-year old niece kept coming back for a serving. Of course, she ended up making several trips to the bathroom during our stay with us haha! Our family friend asked me for the ingredients. After giving her the contents, she found it quite complex for a drink that normally calls for 1 sachet mixed in water. She admits that this version tastes different and better.
As for the teppanyaki rice, at first I thought it didn't have much of a fan base. But, when I looked at the rice cooker, we were all out! We had to get pizza to fill in the carb-gap.
By the time we finished eating, people were full enough not to touch the kakanin anymore. Well, I'm still hungry, but no more chicken in sight. A, had been eating Snyder's white corn tortilla chips together with the mango salsa that I made earlier. Come to think of it, since it's still raining and we have tortilla chips, tomato soup for dinner sounds nice.
Moving on to the next best-seller of the day, the iced tea. It goes without saying that it taste good to the point that my very picky 7-year old niece kept coming back for a serving. Of course, she ended up making several trips to the bathroom during our stay with us haha! Our family friend asked me for the ingredients. After giving her the contents, she found it quite complex for a drink that normally calls for 1 sachet mixed in water. She admits that this version tastes different and better.
As for the teppanyaki rice, at first I thought it didn't have much of a fan base. But, when I looked at the rice cooker, we were all out! We had to get pizza to fill in the carb-gap.
By the time we finished eating, people were full enough not to touch the kakanin anymore. Well, I'm still hungry, but no more chicken in sight. A, had been eating Snyder's white corn tortilla chips together with the mango salsa that I made earlier. Come to think of it, since it's still raining and we have tortilla chips, tomato soup for dinner sounds nice.
