Archive for October 2007
how to eat lanzones
You have to hit the Philippines during specific fruit seasons. Otherwise, you miss out on getting unique, tropical fruits that you can’t enjoy stateside. One of my faves is lanzones. They look a little like longan and chicos, if you’re familiar with those. The difference is that I hate longans and chicos. Heh. The rule of thumb when picking out lanzones at the market is to find the ones covered in ants. The ants always get to the sweet ones. Buuuuut, these days sellers have been known to put ants on lanzones just to get folks to think that they’re sweet. Lanzones that aren’t sweet aren’t bland – they’re SOUR so beware.
bahay kubo breakfast
Before I left my godparents very generously offered that I stay at their bougie new house in Malolos during my stay. My godmother specifically recommended that I have a breakfast of champorado with tuyo in their bahay kubo. It turned out being my favorite meal of the entire trip.
My godparents’ bahay kubo is situated in a corner of their backyard and beautifully constructed of bamboo. That particular morning was rainy which gave us a nice breeze and we sat there for a good hour reminiscing, laughing, and eating.
I think I love champorado because it makes me feel like I’m five years old. Not just a regular five year old but a five year old with an awesome prize. My Tita Tane made this batch using regular rice and sticky rice. Cook the rice using double the water recommended for regular rice cooking and add cocoa powder and sugar. Use unsweetened cocoa powder so you can control the sweetness yourself. Stir until a porridge consistency and the rice is cooked. Top it all with evaporated milk – we used the PI-staple, Alaska brand.
max’s – mall of asia, pasay city, phils
There is a Max’s Restaurant in San Francisco but if you ask anybody who is anybody they will tell you that it’s not as good as the original restos in the Philippines. This particular meal came after a mondo shopping expedition to the Mall of Asia in Pasay. Built on reclaimed land, it is the sixth largest mall in the world. Even for the seasoned shopper like myself, it was a bit overwhelming. Anywho, back to the food.
We ordered one of the family meals that is enough for 10 people and costs about P3,000. That’s roughly USD 66 depending on the exchange rate. Not bad at all if you are feeding 10 people. Here’s what you get:
mabuhay ang pilipinas
Welcome home to me!
After a week and a half in India, I finally found myself in our family house in Imus, Cavite, Philippines. My parents were also in town and my Mom wanted to make sure that I got good ol’ home cooking after my travels in India. I’ve featured this meal before so I won’t go into the details but we had fried tilapia and ginisang monggo with rice. Lovely, soft, sticky, Jasmine rice. The tilapia in the Philippines usually comes from fish farms that you can find all over the place (in Tagalog: palaisdahan – did I spell that right?). Usually they are smaller than the gigantor tilapia that you get in the US. Somehow this makes them a lil’ tastier.
Up ahead are a gillion posts about airplane food, Indian food, Filipino food, Singaporean food, snacks, fruits…. the list goes on and on.
plaza premium lounge, changi airport
I was pretty excited to get to Singapore. Good thing too since I had a 19 hour layover to contend with.
We tried unsuccessfully to check in to the Transit Hotel in Terminal 2. Because we’re dumb, we hadn’t made previous reservations. Take heed future travelers that you should call ahead if you know you’ll need a room here. As an alternative we ended up in the Plaza Premium Lounge across the way.
This place is not bad at all. There are plenty of chairs that you can push together to make decent beds. We took over a corner of the place and did some rearranging until we were plenty comfortable. For about SGD 30 each you can take advantage of the seating, the internet, and the snacks for 5 hours.
Snacks? I’m there. By the time we got to Singapore it was lunch time in California so even though we had been eating our bio clocks were signaling meal time. Here’s my little snack plate of itty bitty egg and tuna finger sandwiches (not egg and tuna together mind you), a curry pastry puff, and some snack mix and peanuts.
They also provide instant noodle cups, cereal, a dinky salad bar, coffee, tea, sodas, cookies, and other things to munch on. Other lounge amenities that you can use with extra charge are the showers (MG says better than the one in the transit hotel), massages (we both had ‘em and they were pretty good), the gym (for extra they’ll give you gym clothes), and an oxygen bar.
If you come here during the day, it has a patio area covered in sunflowers which is really pretty.
leg 2: seoul to singapore
After 12.5 hours of plane time we had a brief 1 hour layover in Korea. A good time for us to stretch out (thanks for seats with no armrest for ease of stretching, Incheon Airport!), walk around, and take a breath of non-cabin air. Sadly, it was night time in Korea so most of the kiosks in the terminal were closed.
leg 1: san francisco to seoul
Yah, I know I’m writing all of my travel posts out of order. No matter – food is food.
It takes a freakin’ long time to get to India. Like really long. Really, really long. The first leg of the journey was from San Francisco to Seoul. We were lucky enough to get decent deals on Singapore Airlines so we got to use the fancy individual media consoles they provide, sleep in the slightly roomier seats, and avail of the pretty tasty (by airplane standards) cuisine.
machan – taj hotel, new delhi, india
It took 4 plane rides but I finally made it to the Taj Mahal in Agra this past weekend. Pretty awesome right? Love’s greatest monument did not disappoint.
On our way back to the airport, Mr. Kuggi, our awesome driver/tour guide, took us sightseeing around Delhi. For lunch we ended up (fittingly) at the Taj Mahal Hotel, a swanky 5 star establishment not far from Delhi’s famous sites. The hotel has a number of different restaurants. We settled for the all-purpose, safari-themed Machan. Machan refers to the platforms that they used to build on top of trees so that royals could spot game during expeditions.
nutella self frosting cupcakes
So this is what I wanted to cook when I whipped up the rice krispy treats instead. Aimed with the necessary eggs (which I was missing last time), I was finally able to try my hand at the nutella cupcakes. I got the recipe from she bakes & she cooks and followed it to a T.
The batter was surprisingly thick. Thinking that I didn’t want them to be crazy sweet I only dropped about 1 tsp of Nutella into each cupcake. They fell a bit after I took them out of the oven but overall the results were delicious. A light vanilla based cupcake with little surprises of Nutella mixed in. Easy to make – just don’t get discouraged if the butter, sugar, and eggs that you start with are lumpy and not too promising. Things clear up considerably after you mix in the sifted flour.
university cafe, palo alto, ca
I found myself in Palo Alto twice this weekend. Round 1 was dinner at University Cafe which was surprisingly good. We ordered bruschetta to start but ended up devouring the bread plus roasted pepper sauce that they brought to the table. The bread was crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. Paired with the dipping sauce it hit the spot.
Feed your reader! 
