Harry Potter Fans, Get Your Butterbeer Fix at Starbucks!

Having read all 7 books, I could pretty much say I grew up with Harry Potter. It didn’t really bother me that I just borrowed all the books from my classmates and never really owned a single copy until I finally got into college. What frustrated me the most is the fact that there are a lot of magical food in Harry Potter I could never get a taste of in real life, and one of them is Butterbeer!

There’s no way I can rub elbows with witches and wizards at Hogsmeade while downing a glass of authentic Butterbeer, and the same thing goes to my chances of heading to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando to get a knockoff version of the drink any time soon. But I’ve recently discovered a secret that would finally put my Butterbeer cravings to rest! Baristas from Starbucks cracked the code to a perfectly yummy Butterbeer. It’s a secret recipe and they don’t have it on their menu, but they will be more than willing to whip it up for you if you just give them this recipe. Take note that this is only available during the holiday season because of the toffee nut syrup, so you still have time! 🙂

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Moist Chocolate Torte Recipe

I recently got myself a new Nikon D3200 DSLR. I have been very envious of my sister Mhel ever since she got her D3100. On the weekend that I got my camera, I had no idea what to take pictures of, so I decided to bake something to put our food photography skills to the test. I remembered we bought a packet of Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate chips the last time we were at the supermarket. From then I knew just what to make with it â€” Moist Chocolate Torte.

This is probably the simplest yet the yummiest cake that was taught to me by my pastry chef at the hotel where I previously worked. I recall eating all the leftovers by the kitchen sink, so I can easily pretend that I’m washing our kitchen tools because our executive chef is very sneaky. 😀 He’ll just pop out from nowhere the moment you’ve already put something in your mouth. I’ve been caught a couple of times, but never really got scolded for it. He knew I was always hungry. 😀

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Recipe: Chocolate Lava Cake aka Molten Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Lava Cake (a.k.a. Molten Chocolate Cake) is a common dessert in fine dining restaurants and hotels, and that’s the reason why people think it’s very hard and expensive to make. But surprisingly, it’s completely the opposite. It’s so easy that you can make it in 15 minutes. 🙂

The only ingredient that may be considered costly are the dark chocolate chips. We used Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate that we got for Php 180. Believe me, you won’t even regret having spent that much once you get your first spoonful of the chocolate lava cake. 😉

We’re sure you’ll love this recipe for Chocolate Lava Cake. We highly recommend you serve this with vanilla ice cream to make the whole experience complete. The warm, oozing decadence from the molten chocolate cake is best enjoyed with ice cream, trust me. 🙂

Chocolate Lava Cake Recipe (a.k.a. Molten Chocolate Cake)

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Fish Ball Sauce Recipe, Just Like Manong’s

There is no doubt we Filipinos love our street food. And if you ask me about my favorite, it’ll have to be fish balls (or fishball). Nothing beats eating fishballs off a stick, piping hot after you just skewered them off a street vendor’s deep-frying pan. But THE best part of it all is dipping them into their famous fishball sauce. YUM!

I’ve always been curious about this well-loved fishball sauce recipe. I studied in UP Diliman and I’m sure many of you have heard that we love eating fishballs there from Manongs who sell them across the campus. It was where I got hooked on the sweet sauce, and I then moved on to the spicy version. I noticed something. It seemed to me that wherever I go, even outside the campus, the taste of the fishball sauce of every Manong fishball vendor (yes, I call all of them manong) I met had the same taste. I wondered, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!? 😀

Over the past decade or so (ugh, I’m old), I’ve asked different vendors about their sauce. Most of them took wild guesses. There were a couple who refused to tell me anything, which, to me, was an indication they really had no idea, and some were so convinced they had the right recipe.

Of course, I tried to make them at home and failed three times (twice, I was adding vinegar). It was only in late 2004 that I learned the right recipe. The manong who sold fishballs at our home in Navotas told me about his fish ball sauce recipe. The thing is, I didn’t get to making it til a year later. It was too late for me to thank him because we already moved to Malabon, but I’m forever thankful. Charot! 😀 Continue reading Fish Ball Sauce Recipe, Just Like Manong’s

Red Sinigang with Del Monte Tomato Sauce

If there’s one Filipino dish I can bear to eat daily, it’ll have to be Sinigang. Our nanay has tried a variety of Sinigang – with seafood, pork or even chicken and beef (yes, she has tried all sorts of proteins with this dish). She has always cooked it the traditional way, but she was excited and welcomed the idea of adding a tasty twist to a classic dish – Sinigang with Del Monte Tomato Sauce.

Sinigang is a savory sour soup that we Filipinos love. The acidity may come from green mangoes, guava and, more widely used, tamarind (sampaloc). Pork, bangus or shrimps are the usual main ingredients, along with vegetables like kangkong (water spinach), okra, chili (siling haba/pang-sinigang), and onions. Our nanay also add slices of tomatoes to it, but we both haven’t encountered or tasted this dish with actual tomato sauce.

That’s until we found out about Del Monte’s Red Movement where they take classic Filipino dishes and add their famous, Filipino favorite tomato sauce into the mix. Some combinations may sound weird, but knowing the brand and the recipes they share through Del Monte Kitchenomics, we know they wouldn’t just come up with concoctions like the Red Bulalo or Red Pesang Bangus without actually testing and proving that adding tomato sauce to these dishes actually works. If you want the recipes for these other dishes, visit www.delmonte.ph.

If you’re aching to know how our nanay made her Del Monte Red Sinigang, read on.

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Oreo Panna Cotta Recipe

Ever since Ken started working as a pastry chef, I barely get to enjoy his homemade desserts. I miss having him whip up something delightful using various ingredients we shopped for or whatever he could find at home. Thankfully, a few Sundays ago, after I ordered dinner for us, he gave in to my request for him to prepare a dessert and he came up with this creamy Oreo Panna Cotta recipe.

We really had no intention of posting this since it was just one of the random things we do at home â€“ I crave for something sweet and Ken will check what ingredients we have available and heâ€™ll whip up something yummy. I was lucky that he was not so tired from work and was in the mood to actually prepare something. 😀

After we posted the photo of the Oreo Panna Cotta on our Facebook page and our own Timelines, there were people who requested for the recipe. So, here yah go! Since we didn’t really think of sharing this beforehand, I don’t have photos while he was preparing this. Your imagination will be at play here, but it’s easy to make. 😉

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Homemade Beef Kare Kare Recipe (PLUS Seafood Version)

If there’s one dish our nanay prepares that I would want to eat for my last meal, it would definitely be her delicious Beef Kare-kare. Looking back to my childhood days, I realize that my fondness for this dish can be traced back to the days when our nanay would prepare kare-kare as one of her sweet ways in rewarding us for doing well, may it be in school or just for simply behaving at home.

Since I started working almost a decade ago, we’ve had kare-kare more often because whenever I’m craving for it, all we need to do is provide for the ingredients and our nanay will lovingly cook it for us. She’s even made her own seafood kare-kare (after our lunch at Emohruo in Pagudpud) which I also love (see the seafood option below this article).

This is actually one reason I don’t order kare-kare at restaurants because I have high standards when it comes to the flavors of this dish. It’s certainly one of the many things I missed when I lived for a year in Cebu that I begged her for the recipe and had to have someone cook it for me exactly the way nanay instructed. It was close to how she prepares it, but nothing beats the original ’cause it’s made with pure love. 🙂

Many can attest to the tastiness of our nanay’s kare-kare. And after the long delay of sharing the recipe, we finally had the time to prepare the dish for this blog. We hope you enjoy it and please let us know how it went when you tried it. If you tweaked a couple of things, we’d love to hear about that too. 🙂

Creamy Beef Kare-kare Recipe

Kare-kare is a Philippine beef stew, usually made with oxtail or tripe, vegetables and ground peanuts. But, this recipe was made with regular beef cuts.

SERVINGS:

Good for 8-10 people, but itâ€™ll really depend on their appetites. The 4 of us can finish this off for lunch and dinner. 😀

Continue reading Homemade Beef Kare Kare Recipe (PLUS Seafood Version)

The BEST Homemade Buffalo Wings Recipe Ever!

Buffalo Wings are considered American staple food, together with our favorite burgers and fries. Theyâ€™re the kind of food people donâ€™t ever mind getting down and dirty in eating because itâ€™s best savored using your bare hands, licking all the crevices of your fingers clean of the delicious buffalo sauce and blue cheese dip.

I had my first taste of the hot wings when some of my friends and I once dined at TGI Fridayâ€™s in Greenbelt. They ordered their usual nachos, burgers, and fries. One friend suggested we get the Buffalo wings, but another friend was quick to negate, saying that itâ€™s too spicy for her taste. But since I love my food hot and spicy, 10 minutes later, we had two servings of Buffalo wings on our table, and they all agreed that I ate 2/3 of it. 😀

Fridayâ€™s Buffalo Wings

After that dinner, the Buffalo wings flew straight up my all-time favorite food list, but itâ€™s not everyday that I have the luxury to buy wings at Fridayâ€™s. So I decided to make some myself at home, and itâ€™s a good thing that I have a very generous sister like Mhel, who shouldered the expenses for the ingredients.

My first attempt to make Buffalo Wings at home â€“ all gone in about 15 minutes! 😀

The Homestyle Buffalo Wings recipe Iâ€™m sharing with you are bits and pieces of different stuff I found on the internet. Not one recipe matched what I wanted to do because there is one requiring me to broil then bake the chicken wings, instead of simply frying them; another has a lousy breading mix recipe, but their instructions for doing the buffalo sauce was by far the simplest among all Iâ€™ve seen. And almost all sites had a recipe for blue cheese dip to accompany the chicken wings, but blue cheese is out of the question – too expensive for me. But, weâ€™ll try that, too, soon. 🙂

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Recipe: Chicken Fillet and Chicken Nuggets with Honey Mustard Sauce

Since my family have been trying (take note of my choice of words :D) to eat healthier, two of the proteins you’d usually see in our refrigerator are chicken meat and eggs. And I love making all kinds of dishes with them. So, when I was craving for McDonald’s McChicken sandwich, instead of spending almost Php 200 to have one delivered, I decided to make my own Chicken Fillet sandwich.

I’m on a low-carb diet, so I usually just enjoy a sandwich for lunch or dinner. My mother also loves sandwiches so we always come up with our own different sandwich spreads. And this one, I’ll keep on making. I know, there’s flour and all. But, c’mon. I’m on a LOW carb diet, not giving it up completely. Give me a break! Hahaha 😀

Though this recipe is so easy, I still want to share it here for those who haven’t tried making chicken fillet or nuggets yet.

Chicken Fillet Sandwich and Chicken Nuggets
with Honey Mustard Sauce Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

3-4 chicken breasts, deboned and cut into cubes
You will need a food processor or blender for this recipe. If you don’t have it, then, just skip the blending/grinding part of the procedure and just cut the chicken breasts into nugget-sized or sandwich fillet-sized pieces. But, you can also opt to chop them into really tiny pieces, if you’ve got the strength and time to do so. 🙂
1 tbsp. garlic powder
1 to 1 1/2 cup bread crumbs (click here to find out how to make your own bread crumbs, see step #1)
1 cup flour
salt and pepper
Optional: You can add your own spices or herbs for your chicken breasts. For mine, I added rosemary. But, you can add parsley and/or basil.
Optional: 1-2 medium-sized eggs
Half of the batch I made, I didn’t dip in the beaten eggs. But, if you prefer to include eggs, you can go ahead with this.
1 cup vegetable oil for semi-deep frying
Lettuce for the sandwiches

Sandwich dressing: This is the mix that I used for our chicken sandwich.

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 tbsp. lemon juice
salt and pepper

Honey Mustard sauce: I don’t have any ingredients available to make barbecue sauce so I decided to make honey mustard instead. But, you can find ready-to-use barbecue sauce at the grocery.

1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp. honey

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Mango Honey Chicken Recipe

When we went to Pagudpud last December and dined at Emohruo Beach Restobar, I really wanted to recreate their Mango Honey Chicken that we all loved. So, for our Noche Buena in 2010, I decided to cook it for us.

I’m so glad I was able to recreate the dish and it really tasted close to Emohruo’s, except theirs was grilled. It’s very simple to do and I know you’d love this! Recipe, after the jump!

Continue reading Mango Honey Chicken Recipe

Chocolate Lava Cake Recipe (a.k.a. Molten Chocolate Cake)

Creamy Beef Kare-kare Recipe

SERVINGS:

Chicken Fillet Sandwich and Chicken Nuggets with Honey Mustard Sauce Recipe

Chicken Fillet Sandwich and Chicken Nuggets
with Honey Mustard Sauce Recipe