Because we’re tethered to our (remote) phone system, you need to observe the usual breaks like morning tea (30 minutes) and lunch (also 30 minutes). So what can you do in 20 minutes?
My first thoughts when the lockdown was announced were; what am I going to cook? Do I have enough food supplies? Do we have enough freezer space?
As it turns out, only the 1st thought/question had a positive answer- I could cook anything I wanted. I didn’t want to make anything complicated, or have a menu heavy on the things that I wanted to cut down on like fats and salt. The thing is, you can never have enough food supplies and because I actually shop everyday, I couldn’t really stretch my foresight far enough; lists just don’t work. I was at the supermarket today and while everything was calm, I was in such a state that I couldn’t focus.
Shall I get squash? (pureed, roasted); almonds maybe (I’ve always wanted to try making almond butter); floury potatoes or all-rounders? Shall we do lamb, or wait when its closer to Easter? Should I get bone broth? Do I need dashi? Do they have fresh sage? Salmon fillets seem cheaper.
So no, there’s no such thing as enough food supplies and we actually need a freezer because even with two refrigerators, the space isn’t enough. We were organising to buy a freezer but didn’t get to in time when alert level 4 was announced to happen on Monday.
I don’t think I’ll survive a pandemic where the comforts we are fortunate to have would not be available. Doyet injured herself today making ‘ukoy’ for chrissakes 😅. That’s just us- we live to eat. Take the food away and I’ll just go to the nearest river to end everything.
Without the comfort of food, life is fucking pointless.
I actually don’t remember when I first had Spam.
First of all, there was Ma Ling Luncheon meat for the longest time and 555 which was more flour and filler than meat. To make the Ma Ling or the 555 go a long way, you cubed the meat and did an omelet. I do this for Spam on the rare occasion I have leftover rice which I always have when I cook rice, because isn’t it stupid and a waste of energy to cook just one cup?
The problem with the Russell Hobbs is that it pressure-cooks the rice so you end up with rice closer to ‘malagkit’ rather than the basmati it’s supposed to be; but that’s my theory anyway or maybe because my rice to water proportion is 3 cups rice and 4 cups water.
But I like it either way and soggy rice re-heats better anyway in the microwave.
I fry the rice with a tablespoon of curry, chilli flakes and sea-salt. I cook the eggs and cubed Spam separately and add them later when the rice is cooked- which because it’s soggy, never really separates. And if you have a good non-stick wok, you could keep stirring forever hoping the grains will separate, so I normally just stir for about 15 minutes.
I eat it with a lemon juice and a splash of Kikkoman; tastes better the next day too.
I still equate happiness and fulfilment with eating and it’s such a hard habit to break. Ideally I would’ve have liked to have eaten the following:
Sisig; probably have a huge batch in the fridge that you can have any time you want
Lechon; Doyet and Jong’s lechon-belly
Chinese ham
A black-forest cake
Pork barbecue
Peking duck
A ton of seafood (I did have my fill of oysters, crayfish and Alaskan King crab at a SkyCity dinner so..)
But everyone was busy, I spent too much on new devices on myself and I didn’t want to face the new year with a bunch of health problems so…
And then you realise, it’s just food.
Albeit, a bit too done to our liking, I can finally say that we’ve perfected roasting a 2 kilo scotch-fillet roast
Grazing is in
New Zealand has great poultry and a roast chicken is satisfying on a lot of levels
I wasn’t meaning to get one, but I couldn’t resist something half-price even if it’s just your ordinary supermarket chain cooked ham on the bone. Perfect for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Does walking an average of 8kms a day justify eating pizza?
I was calm today when we went to the Queen Victoria Market. The only time I audibly gasped was when I saw a stand selling bratwurst on a good-sized baguette and with sauerkraut that reminded me of insipid atchara. I’ve been here three times so it wasn’t at all startling to see mounds of antipasto (six kinds of olive, octopus, apricot stuffed with sweetened mascarpone), french pastry, cured meats and pale-pink langoustine cooling on beds of ice. I had the bratwurst and then $10 worth of what locals call chicken ribs (which is really a chicken’s scapula, the meat on which is part of the breast) which has a bit of crispy, rendered skin and a good enough sliver of meat). And it wasn’t even 9:30am.
But I tell myself, I’m on holiday and of course, normalcy goes out the window.
And that’s good because at some point, you’d really want to go back to the normalcy of ‘normal’ food. It’s cost-effective (I got a $20 sliver of truffled manchego cheese) and healthy (the last time I had greens was four days ago). In the afternoon, rummaging through a clearance book centre I found what I thought was a good $3 deal for a cookbook or any book for that matter. Nutrient Dense Food on a Shoe-String Budget by Arabella Forge won’t win you Master Chef, but that’s the whole point of real cooking- simplicity, flavour and practicality (guess how I could buy that Gucci bumbag I’ve been eyeing? Yup, by savings from preparing basic meals, a compromise which to me, is a win-win).
Basic in this sense, means the right kind of food; unprocessed, fresh, nutritious and cheap.
Looking forward to:
Making my own DIY bacon
Shifting shopping sources to local farmer’s markets
Stricter food planning
Making natural sauces
Baked apples stuffed with mince and peas
Making kim chi
Making lemon curd cheese
Pickled salmon (yum!)
I’m not much of a fruit-person really but it’s hard to ignore fruit when they’re growing everywhere; and Kiwis don’t generally care if their yard is carpeted with fallen fruit just rotting away. So what to do with a bagful of plums from Jong’s garden and from the neighbours at Wattle Downs? Make a plum cake.
This recipe- and there are a million recipes for this cake- is from Chelsea Sugar’s Recipe Club Bake-Off winner and uses almond meal which I think gives this cake (and fig cake which I’ve done before) a lighter, airier texture which I like.
Ingredients:
10 dark red plums
3 Tbsp white Sugar
300g butter
1½ cups white Sugar (I only used 3/4 cup)
3 eggs
Zest of 1 orange (I didn’t have an orange so didn’t include this)
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ cup milk
1½ cups flour
1 cup ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
Icing Sugar for sprinkling
Method
Preheat oven 180°C and grease a 26cm tin. Cut plums, discard stones and put into a bowl with 3 Tbsp sugar. Set aside.
Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and then mix in zest and vanilla. Stir in milk, flour, almonds and baking powder.
Spread into prepared tin and then place plums over the top. Bake for 1 hour.
Sprinkle icing sugar on top when cool
All the best meals and food items for 2018 in photos because why not- you’re a compulsive photo-taker of your food since 2003!
I will eat pork barbecue until the end of time. We were thinking of getting pork barbecue already prepped for New Year’s Eve. There’s a Filipino shop in Takanini that does it for the Otara markets and you can order in advance for $1 a stick
Dumplings got big in 2018 with heaps of frozen selections in the freezer aisle of supermarkets. The best are those made from scratch at the Asian food-stalls in East Tamaki; pillowy white, either steamed or boiled, the burst of flavourful broth as you bite into them is always a pleasant surprise.
Pork, beef, chicken..we’ve had all sorts. Versatile, they’re also incredibly easy to make
So who cares if they’re selling off Tip Top? Sure, it has some great flavours (I love Gummy-Gummy Gum Drops), but it’s time to educate your palate to something more global like Haagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry’s, or something local that actually can be global like Duck Island ice cream. It makes it worth it driving all the way to Hamilton for a tub.
There are chicken nuggets and then there are BP Cafe’s nuggets on steroids (I hope not lol). At a dollar each, they’re meaty, hefty and chickeny.
You don’t need Julia Child’s cooking talent to make a pot. In spite of the posh Frenchy name, it’s as homey and easy to make as adobo. Only one special requirement- choose the wine carefully
It’s the most coveted invitation to the best ribs in town that nobody’s ever heard of. I hope we get invited again next year.
Delicious breads, buttery-cinnammony rolls- and then Jong needed to cut down on carbs and it all came to an end. One day…
It only took me tries to actually duplicate the one we had at a restaurant in Palmerston North- what you’re looking for is a tender, flavourful head redolent with butter and herbs and sitting ever so nicely atop a mash of your own choosing
The fruit of summer always makes me crave for guavas
Can’t get enough of them- pan-fried, grilled or steamed, they don’t have that denseness you sometimes get with sausages where the ‘meat’ is actually fillers and extenders.
Growing up, shrimps were so expensive that you almost always shared them with someone else. So on occasion, I indulge on a pound’s worth pan-fried with butter, garlic and a sprinkling of pepper-flakes just to remind myself that I could.
All from a cup at .99 cents and bulked up with cabbage, left-over pork, and a whole egg for those nights when you can’t be distracted from Netflix
This is indulgence. This could possibly be a stroke waiting to happen if you ate all of it (I didn’t). All it takes is about 6 large potatoes, one bottle of cream and 100 grams of butter to create a magma-like surface oozing with creamy, buttery curd and silky-smooth slabs of potato that melt in your mouth
Chicken tenders are my go-to choices for food places that actually only offer them as sides. And they are ridiculously easy to make even in the office if you have baking paper and a George Foreman grill…and yes, the broccoli rice was just alright>
When you put pork pieces with vinegar, onions, garlic, pepper and a couple of bay leaves you can, midway through the cooking, decide whether to turn it into adobong puti or binagoongan. I’ve been craving the salty-umami blast of bagoong so binagoongan it is.
If food was the enemy (health wise), it was also the saviour; a good, satisfying meal is confirmation that life is far too short to be spent being always cautious (photos taken using the iPhone 7plus).
I had this just after New Year's 2017 in the Philippines and it brought back memories of all the weekends when we would treat ourselves with charcoal-grilled pork belly, so good that my mother couldn't resist having a piece in spite of her constant reservations against fat and cholesterol. I swear that there is something about Philippine pork- taste, fat to meat ratio- that makes it far superior to anything we've tried in New Zealand.
Two years ago when I first tried these products, the taste was far from satisfactory. Eating a meat substitute always felt like I substituted my life for something that was just a sad and bland imitation of it. Surely, I thought, vegetarians must always be half-miserable even if they wouldn't admit it? But two years on and the quality has leap-frogged expectations. Sure, the texture is never a duplicate of the real thing, but that's the whole point- it has evolved into something that can stand on its own, texture and flavour-wise. Meat will always be meat, but a nutty, deeply moreish black bean and beet-root burger (this one from the Bean Supreme range) is truly something else and deserving of being included in your repertoire of dishes.
There is something about Italian inspired dishes that I sometimes shy away from like pasta dishes with uninspired, one-note sauces with generic meat. But Amano wields a gentler, finer hand on Italian pasta and stew staples and using seasonal and local New Zealand produce. Dishes are simply plated with no superfluous bullshit; you can eat everything that's on the plate.
When we were in Richmond for a week-long work-do, we had dinner thrice at this restaurant called Three Rooms and couldn't help but feel a bit numerological; the restaurant had three dining areas, offered either two or three courses at $30 and $35 respectively from a selection of entrees, main and desserts that had six dishes each. Startlingly cheap prices aside, the quality of the dishes was even more startling. Servings were generous, meats perfectly done and side-dishes never an afterthought or a mere decoration.
Burgers have become a destination in themselves and the number of burger places in Auckland with the word burger in their names and one other word descriptor (Better Burger, Murder Burger, Burger Burger etc) has all of us confused. But you can't confuse the taste and while Better Burger is our default go-to, The Burger Bar at St. Kevins' Arcade on Auckland's K'Road is reserved for those cravings when we want something a little bit more for our money, and at $15, this 1/3 lb behemoth stuffed with oregano beef, bacon, spinach and kale and lashings of homemade aioli and tomato sauce is a bargain.
After having lived in New Zealand for over nine years, I am now able to tell if a South-East Asian person was Vietnamese, or Thai or Singaporean. But dishes not so much which is fine, because with cuisine other than our own, seeking them is often dictated by price and taste. We love Indian for example, but it has become so generic that you don't really put in the effort and the expense of going to an Indian restaurant- you just buy the food to go. Malaysian cuisine has the advantage of multiple ethnic influences and the PappaRich chain of restaurants serves an array of that which captures the largest customer base possible. When a branch opened at the Sylvia Park shopping mall, long queues were standard for the next couple of months and the smell of curries and noodles was so intense, it permeated the neighbouring shop spaces. Obviously I always go for the Nasi Lemak or the Hainan Chicken, but I've always mulled, but never tried the bread dishes- Hainan bread served in slices and in sweet and savoury variants with just condensed milk on top or with boiled eggs. Isn't that bizarre???
We found Wow Chicken and Donburi on High Street while looking for donburi. But they didn't serve it on weekends and only had the Korean deep fried chicken which we felt was a little steep at $32 for less than 10 pieces. But we were hungry so chicken it was- and WOW lol. There is fried chicken and then there is Korean fried chicken. We waited for like 20+ minutes so it must have been made from scratch. It tasted fresh, the coating unlike any other that I've tried and was the perfect balance of crunch and moistness. It felt like it was part of the chicken and not an extraneous component of it. The chicken was served with pepper and salt and cubed cold radishes that were the perfect tangy palate cleansers.
It will always be Rubi's siopao in Dagupan City for us, forever. But you never stop looking for a fairly good substitute. I found this at a Chinese run bakery next to New World in Manurewa. The buns are the closest to Rubi's, fairly bigger than a regular-sized human palm (like mine), pillow-soft, and filled with an adequate amount of filling that is neither too fatty or gristly. And I always get them first thing in the morning when they're obviously freshly made. Nothing is more awful than pork buns that have been sitting in a pot the whole day and heated repeatedly.
The year 2017 will also go down as the year when I literally ate my weight in chicken wings. While the chicken wings from Pizza hut is my current go-to, I wouldn't mind replacing it with Hell's free-range ones served with cola BBQ sauce- if it was only a little bit cheaper and accessible.
I'm getting used to making adobo in smaller batches by just using breast-meat. Simple and satisfying, adobo keeps well and saves you on days when you can't be bothered cooking or buying something from the take-away.
We went to the Auckland Night Markets over the weekend and a Filipino food stand was back selling beef kaldereta, laing/Bicol Express and pork sisig. I got the sisig ($7) and didn't really care about the kaldereta or the laing. I don't want to brag, but our family does better Filipino food than most; the kaldereta didn't even have olives.
But it's not easy making sisig so I grab any chance I get to buy it ready-made. It's not always guaranteed that it's made according to how I normally like my sisig. As it turned out, the sisig I bought could have done with a few other additions, but the familiar chewy, sticky texture was there along with that porky-sour-creamy taste, and that's just what you need really when you don't have the time to make it yourself. Heck, I get so desperate sometimes I even buy the canned sisig from the Asian store.
The great thing about sisig is that it comes with so many tweaks and I actually like them all- toasted, so that you get the crispy bits that stick to the pan; slightly moist and gelatinous punctuated with the nutty creaminess of the pork brain (gross to some, but the taste is sublime); intensely sour from a dousing of vinegar; or even westernised with slashings of mayonnaise.
I remember $2 pig-heads at the butcher in my first two years in New Zealand- you bought one, seasoned it, roasted it in the oven, chopped it all up as fine as you can, added onions (I would use both red and white) and seasoning, and grilled it just before serving. Obviously it's great with rice, but I can honestly eat it in spoonfuls just by itself, hot or cold.
I ate mine mixed with a kale and savoy cabbage salad.
Sisig with kale and savoy cabbage
plopping an egg in the middle of the sisig
sisig teppanyaki style
sisig as pulutan is the best
..the day when this study says skipping it could be good for you (okay, fine; Huffington Post is not exactly a credible source) and some would say that the effects are exactly what I'm looking for- lowered blood pressure and cholesterol.
Good for you today, bad for you tomorrow, I've stopped caring. Cheap, filling and nutritious, I've bought into the whole free-range thing simply because it's cheaper now and I wouldn't feel conned if it turns out that there's nothing beneficial about it at all.
I haven't mastered it yet, but weekends offer enough time to make the effort for poaching.
But wait- I'm on cholesterol medication so it should be fine. Kidding. I've reduced it to just twice a month.
As I grew older, I tended to favour the savoury over the sweet. The only concession that I make for a sugary breakfast with cereal or granola is when the product promises substantial amounts of protein. Still, this brand is 18% sugar so I don't have it often
A smoothie a day keeps the hunger at bay. Sometimes.
I have about eight more days to go before my next blood-test for cholesterol and in the last couple of weeks, I had bacon only once. I also cut down on my eggs because it felt weird just having eggs without bacon. For me, this is the best breakfast combo- sure, I'll throw in a pancake or two or fresh white toast on occasion, but I'm happy with just the two.
I almost always cook the bacon in the oven without additional oil, and I never salt my eggs; it comforts me a little, these little nods to health. You only live once, so I say, do it moderately. Nothing is worse than being an extreme health nut and getting cancer or a tumour anyway, because it happens.
So lately, I haven't been eating breakfasts at all save for my usual morning espresso and would have my first proper meal of the day at lunch, usually at 12:30. And I feel just fine. I've heard that this sort of 'fasting' may actually be beneficial. I also like the feeling of a tight, taut and empty stomach.
But I need my fibre, my complex carbs and my proteins and this morning I finally took a closer look at the cereal/breakfast aisle and saw all these...mmmmm..options
I had my regular blood tests done recently and this time prior to taking it, I didn't try to 'control' the outcome which meant eating food I 'preferred' versus food I 'should be eating'. Mind you, I have a few healthy habits firmly ingrained- less or no sugar at all, low carb, low sodium- so it wasn't like I went crazy. But I did go crazy- on fats.
I loooove fats. At parties where lechon is served, all I would have is a plateful of lechon-belly, just warm enough to feel the pork fat melt in my mouth like butter.
My food diary for those eight weeks was filled with eggs (around half a dozen a week), bacon (every week), chicken wings and mayonnaise- mayo with chicken, mayo with eggs, mayo on white toast on days when I allowed myself to eat white bread (twice a month).
The thing with fats is that it's filling; I never feel hungry, hence, I never feel compelled to snack (to be fair, I haven't been a snacking sort of person). But obviously, having a predominance of fats in one's diet would have consequences even if you're physically active. I tried to google, 'do you burn all the fat that you eat' and it gave me a trove of conflicting answers.
And that's the annoying thing about food and dieting- the obstacle is science itself- when it can't decide definitively if eggs are really bad for you or not. But worry less on what's on the outside and more what the state of your body is by the numbers. With an ideal (total) cholesterol level of less than 4.0 mmol/L (according to NZ health guidelines), mine read 6.2. My current GP frowns at anything over the prescribed level as all doctors should I guess, but for me, it wasn't that bad- maybe I should've shown her my food diary. I was expecting it to be way, way higher.
So ditched the bacon for now and hoping for better numbers in the next couple of weeks when I do another blood-test.
DID YOU KNOW?
Your liver typically produces approximately 75% of the cholesterol circulating in your blood - a diet high in saturated fat stimulates the liver to produce more cholesterol.
The remaining 25% of your cholesterol is derived from the food you eat. This dietary cholesterol is present in animal foods – mainly in dairy products, meat, egg yolks, offal and shellfish. It is not present in plant foods.
For these reasons, the saturated fat and cholesterol content of the food you eat are likely to have a strong influence on your blood cholesterol levels.
Other factors that may influence your blood cholesterol levels include:
(via Southern Cross NZ)
In a country where food choices are surprisingly few, I wouldn't complain if I had fish and chips every other day. There is always something inherently satisfying about a meal that has some carbs, a whole lot of fat, a fair amount of protein and the flavour of which you can calibrate with more salt if necessary (flaky salt is best); a dash of something sour (malt vinegar is rubbishly ineffectual in cutting through the fat, use native Philippine vinegar instead preferably one that you've spiked with chilies); or something surprising like Japanese mayonnaise and pungent horseradish.
Variety can also be achieved by buying your fish and chips from different places; no two are the same with significant variances in the batter (a nearly equal ratio of batter to fish-meat is best) and of course, the type of fish used. There's hoki (lemon fish?), tarahiki and snapper which I always go for even if it's slightly more expensive. Apparently, in the South Island, they commonly use Bluefin Gurnard and blue cod, both of which I still haven't had the chance of tasting.
When Jay first visited New Zealand he became enamoured with fish and chips and we wondered why in a country like the Philippines where seafood was virtually predominant, no one has thought of dipping boneless bangus in batter and putting it in the deep-fryer- and that's because it's dumb. And unnecessary- bangus is flavourful by itself, unmasked save for salt and pepper (but don't forget the dipping sauce of fish sauce and calamansi). But white fish are inherently bland, hence, the mummification with eggs and flour. But I'm not complaining.
My mother makes it a point to ring us on our birthdays. After the greetings have been dispensed with, it's mostly a catch-up on what's happening at home. Unlike dreaded text messages in the middle of the night, most of the news- admittedly grim ones- concern other people. Because really, there are only two kinds of news anyway right?
Binky hates it tho- what kind of news is that she complained to Doyet who told her about what had happened to Atchi Gina. But she's not the only one who chose to brush that away. When I was home last December mom had urged me to pay Atchi Gina a visit, but I really didn't want to. What does one say to someone who is dying from a mysterious condition that doctors couldn't diagnose?
These are people you've known your entire life, but the connections are now so tenuous, I feel as if the stories are not real. It seems like copping out, but I would choose to remember people as they were in the past- alive, healthy, happy.
And on a happier note, we settled on Chinese for Doyet's birthday.
Doable or are you just setting yourself up to fail?
Read More....is too much. The problem is neither poverty nor hunger, but food inequality. Everyone expects you to eat healthy but wait until you've finished ringing up your items and see how much damage it has done to your budget. To put it into perspective, the food in the photo above cost me $15; smoked salmon (because I need my Vitamin E, good cholesterol) was $9 and the salad (because I need my finer and my vitamins) was $5. And this was just for one lunch.
Fifteen dollars can get a size 14 dressed chicken, two servings of (fried) chips and a large soda; this is dinner for a family of four. Not the healthiest, but obviously your options are dictated by what you can afford.
Gardin of Eatin Corn Tortilla Chips retails at $7 for a 200 grams- but you have to try it. The blue-black chips have a depth of flavour and texture that screams quality
Who would have known that all sugars are the same calorie wise?
My problem with Muesli is that it's not pleasant nor easy to eat; I feel dental bills coming in a month
Utterly tasteless- and you end up using sugar laden jam to counter the blandness
The problem is that if you end up eating a whole tub (which I did) you cancel out the health benefits
This is $48 bucks; ain't buying this shit
