Experience Madrid Fusion Manila at SM Supermalls with Fusion Flavors

Last year, the Philippines successfully hosted the first ever Madrid Fusion exhibition to be staged outside of Spain. Madrid Fusion Manila is back for its second year, and with the support of SM Supermalls, this gastronomic event has now transformed into a nationwide celebration of Filipino and Spanish flavors.

Madrid Fusion Manila 2016
Madrid Fusion Manila 2016

Madrid Fusion Manila is back this year to celebrate the shared 300-year history between Spain and the Philippines with the theme, “The Manila Galleon: East Meets West” from April 7-9, 2016 at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall of Asia. The 3-day culinary event will bring together renowned chefs from Europe and Asia to showcase their cooking prowess in a Gastronomy Congress. A simultaneous exhibition of fine food, gourmet products, new ingredients and cooking technology will also happen at the Madrid Fusion Manila Trade Expo, so you can expect that it’s going to be a fun and food-filled weekend for your family and friends.

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Dreaming of Becoming a Chef?

If you are not quite sure what career path to take, there are certainly many jobs you can choose from. Some require more education than others. There are many things you will need to consider when you are choosing a career. First of all, how much money will you be satisfied with earning each year? Make sure that the career you choose has the income potential you are looking for. You should also be certain to choose a career that you will enjoy doing for many years to come. Why should you become a chef like Tim Love?Here are some of the biggest reasons.

Tim Love - Chef

1. Great income potential

It is no secret that chefs make great money. While chefs do spend many hours on their feet, and the hours can be quite long, they are compensated accordingly. It is also possible for a chef’s pay to go up substantially during his or her career. You can work your way up the ranks to become an executive chef of a classy restaurant. This position pays extremely well. If you want to maximize your income, you can choose to open your own restaurant. While this will be a significant financial risk, the financial rewards can be huge if your restaurant is a success.

2. You can work in many different locations

If is common for chefs to change jobs frequently during their careers. This sometimes happens because a chef will get a better job offer somewhere else. However, chefs will often quit a job because they want a new experience. Working in the same kitchen can become boring. Chefs can find work in hotels, restaurants, resorts, cruise ships and many other places. This allows a chef to have a new adventure, while also earning a living at the same time.

Restaurant

3. Chefs are always in demand

The economy has been bad for a long time. However, professional chefs have not been affected by the economic downturn. In fact, there is more of a demand for chefs now than ever before. This is a profession that is always in demand, so if the restaurant you are working for goes out of business, you will not be out of work for very long. If you are able to prepare a wide variety of foods, there will always be someone willing to hire you. In these uncertain economic times we are living in, being a chef is one of the most stable professions out there.

How to Cook Up Some Creative Treats

We all need food in order to function and the busier we are, the more we need to fuel us! However, some food can be really boring and just the way it looks can be off-putting. It is important to have a well-balanced diet, so you need to find ways to have more fun with your food. Everyone from parents, food fanatics and chefs are being more creative with the way their serve food in order to make meal times more fun for everyone. Eating is supposed to be enjoyable, so instead of looking at food as something you need, turn it into something you really want and coming up with fun ways to serve boring food is perfect if you have fussy children, a picky partner or choosy customers.

Here are some fun ideas on how to be more creative with your meals:

Pancake Shapes

One of the simplest ways to make breakfast pancakes more fun is to put the batter into cookie cutters, so the pancakes come out in different shapes. This is also easy to do with fried eggs and they are great for entertaining children during meal times.

Pancake-shapes

 

Potato Casino Chips

We all like snacking on chips. In fact, chips are a popular way to serve potatoes with all kinds of meals from meat like steaks and sausages through to vegetarian dishes like fried eggs or as a chip butty. With May being National Burger Month, the chips were created from red and white potatoes to represent casino chips – a simple way to make a common food more fun.

Potato-casino-chips

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Getting Creative with Menu Bingo

Anyone who likes to experiment in the kitchen will tell you that having so many recipes under their belt can be both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, you have so many recipes to choose from when it’s time to prep your meals; on the other, making the choice can be quite difficult when you have too many options. An article on the New York Times goes as far as calling the problem of having too many choices “a paralyzing problem”.

You’re bound to experience these paralyzing choices more often with the Yuletide Season rolling in, but luckily, you can use a fun bingo game to create meal plans and menus, eliminating the hassles of having to rifle through the hundreds of recipes you’ve mastered to be able to prepare something new for your family every day. Bingo has helped many households in surprising ways, with the UK Food Standards Agency even using it to promote healthy eating with Eatwell Bingo, and even Iceland Foods has been unable to resist the charms of the industry, launching Iceland Bingo in 2012. Now bingo can help you and your family too, all while making meal planning much more fun and interactive.

Menu Bingo

To play Menu Bingo, go through your recipe books for five recipes for each of the following categories: Main, Side 1, Side 2, and Dessert. Once you have these twenty recipes, you can then plot them out on a bingo card template, with one column standing for each category. Label each item in the columns a number from 1-5. You could also fill out there boxes by asking the members of the family what they feel like having and taking those down. Once you’ve made your bingo card, it’s time to roll a die, with the number that you roll corresponding to the dish that you’ll be cooking. Take turns rolling the die for each category, and when someone rolls a six, they get to choose which of the items to have. Once an item has been picked already, make sure to mark it off, and then proceed to roll for the rest of the days of the week.

You can have many variations of this game, such as a bingo card with seven items in each category – one for each day of the week – or even a bingo card each for breakfast, lunch and dinner. By taking some time out of the start of the week, you can cut back on your cooking prep time!

See You At The 12th Ultimate Taste Test in Rockwell

The much-awaited food event of the year – the 12th Ultimate Taste Test – is happening this coming Saturday, September 27th, at the Rockwell Tent. And if you haven’t bought your tickets yet, you still got time! 🙂

2014 Ultimate Taste Test in Rockwell Tent at the Power Plant Mall

This year, there are over 40 food purveyors who will be there, so just imagine how much food you get to taste and discover in this 1-day event. You can see the full list of Ultimate Taste Test 12 concessionaires here.

Last time we were at the Ultimate Taste Test, here were our favorites:

Premium Roast Angus Corned Beef from The Plaza

The Plaza Premium Roast Angus Corned Beef

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KFC Breakfast Buffet : Unlimited Favorites this July!

We know many of you would agree that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A hearty breakfast can kick-start your day. And this is exactly why KFC decided to bring back their breakfast offering. It’s all UNLIMITED! Hurry because KFC’s Breakfast Buffet is only offered all weekends of July (hopefully, they’ll extend it). 😀

KFC Breakfast Buffet - unlimited breakfast all weekends of July

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Shop For Great French Champagne

People who want to shop French Champagne should consider that they have many options when looking. There are several styles of French Champagne on the market, but people need to make sure that they are getting the Champagne that tastes the best to them. The best part of choosing is that it can come in a variety of flavors. Some Champagnes sparkle more than others, and some are made from special wines.

Top Champagne brands from Wine Folly

 

THE SPARKLE

The sparkle that is produced in the wine occurs because of fermentation that is done on the wines. The sparkle for some wines is very intense, and that is how people like it. Other people prefer their Champagnes to be a little more dull. The less sparkle a Champagne has, the more someone can taste the actual flavor of the wine. This means that people need to choose carefully when they are looking for the right Champagne.

 

THE VINEYARD

Many people prefer to get a Champagne from the same vineyard that produces their favorite wine. This means that someone’s favorite wine is used to make the Champagne they prefer the most. There are other times when people are going to choose Champagnes that are markedly different from the wines that they like. The variety that people prefer in their wines speaks to the vineyard they like the most.

Portrait and new menu items

 

THE SIZE

There are many sizes of Champagne on the market that people can enjoy. There are large sizes, but there are smaller bottles that people can use for parties, too. People must choose the amount of Champagne that they need for their party, but they also need to make sure they can serve everyone comfortably.

When people want to select the right kind of Champagne for their purposes, they must remember that the flavor, sparkle and size of the Champagne. Champagne is a great way to celebrate with loved ones, and it can be used to produce some of the most amazing drinks in the world. With the help of the right Champagne, it is easy to celebrate in style.

Celebrate the Best of Filipino Cuisine at Corniche of Diamond Hotel

There are but a few world class hotels in the Philippines that celebrate the culinary heritage of their host country. Diamond Hotel is one of those few, and they promote our rich cuisine by launching an annual Filipino Food Festival. This year, they have asked 3 of Manila’s most celebrated chefs to come aboard and showcase their prowess by reinventing all-time Pinoy favorites at The Best of Filipino Cuisine lunch and dinner buffet in Corniche Restaurant from May 13–23, 2014.

Corniche The Best of Filipino Cuisine - Diamond Hotel

 

FILIPINO CELEBRITY CHEFS + DIAMOND HOTEL EXECUTIVE CHEF

Filipino celebrity chefs Bruce Lim, Sau del Rosario and JP Anglo join Diamond Hotel’s Executive Chef Marko Rankel in celebrating the flavors of Filipino cuisine. We loved every twist they added to the dishes they prepared for this food festival. 🙂

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This Healthy Chicken Broccoli Pasta Recipe Is Easy and Cheesy

For some reason, the prevailing notion is that healthy foods cannot be flavorful, and flavorful foods cannot be healthy. Fortunately, this is simply not the case with this cheesy pasta with chicken and broccoli recipe. While many dietary fads are advising people to shirk foods that contain carbohydrates, these diets are simply not sustainable. In fact, most dietitians recommend a meal that has protein, carbohydrates, and fats in a ratio of 3:1:1 or even 4:1:1 within two hours of exercising to maximize the effects of the workout. Achieving this ratio is not a difficult or painstaking task, and this particular recipe just happens to fall into this ratio. By making this chicken broccoli pasta recipe, it is easy to find that perfect balance of health and flavor.

Penne with Chicken, Broccoli and Tomato Basil Cheddar

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We’re Torn Over SPAM Tocino

There is no doubt we love SPAM. We’ve tried almost all of their variants available at the grocery, with the original and the one with bacon topping our list. So when we saw a post on Facebook about SPAM Tocino, we thought it was some kind of April Fools’ day joke. 😀

SPAM Tocino post on their official Facebook page

I didn’t take it seriously UNTIL I decided to check out SPAM’s official Facebook page and saw the post above. I did mention it to Ken and he said he saw some people saying it was based on Mexican Tocino. Still, I was curious. He LOVES tocino, and I do too. And we love SPAM, so we just had to find out how this new variant tastes like.

We learned it was available at Robinsons Supermarket. We first checked the one at Victory Mall in Monumento – nada. We finally found it after a few days at the new Robinsons Supermarket here in Malabon. Though we wanted to know if we’ll like this, it took us a few more days before we decided to give it a taste.

The SPAM itself was a li’l wet compared to the original variant, so it slid smoothly out of the can. You can also smell that the sauce that surrounds it is sweet. When I started slicing the meat, I saw that the color was slightly yellowish (as you can see in the photo below). By this time, I was already excited to fry them up to get the crisp we wanted.

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