Showing posts with label Filipino food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Filipino food. Show all posts

Friday, March 27, 2020

Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Ann Quirino's Beef Nilaga Short Ribs & Vegetables Stew



My Guest Blogger is Elizabeth Ann Quirino who shares with us one of her recipes, a favorite Filipino comfort food, Nilagang Baka - Beef Nilaga Short Ribs and Vegetables Stew.

Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino, based in New Jersey, is a journalist, and a multi-award-winner of the Plaridel Writing Awards and has been a recipient of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Awards. She is the author of three cookbooks Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food in a Multicooker Pot; My Mother’s Philippine Recipes and How To Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks. She has co-edited the history book Statesman and Survivor: Elpidio Quirino, 6th President of the Philippines; and illustrated/created the food coloring book Color and Cook. All her books are sold on Amazon. She is a correspondent for Positively Filipino online magazine; and blogs about Filipino home cooking on her site AsianInAmericaMag.com.


Betty Ann, as she is fondly called, was born in the Philippines and raised in Tarlac province where her way of life was molded early on by her parents’ farming and agricultural business. From the time she was a little girl, Betty Ann learned how to cook traditional Philippine dishes from her mother and has transformed these culinary skills to modern day Filipino cooking in her American kitchen. Betty Ann is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP-New York); the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance; the Association of Culinary Historians of the Philippines. She is also on the board of advisers of the President Elpidio Quirino Foundation.

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Nilagang Baka - Beef Nilaga Short Ribs and Vegetables Stew:
Instant Pot + Stove-top

By Elizabeth Ann Quirino

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Cooking with Cecilia: Lengua Estofado






Cooking Lengua Estofado
by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Ingredients:
Marinade
1 cup water
1 tsp whole peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3 tbsp each: apple cider vinegar or white cooking wine, soy sauce, water
2 tsp salt

3 tbsp oil
5 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 minced onion
2 potatoes, quartered
2 cups julienned carrots
1/3 cup stuffed olives
1/3 cup button mushrooms, cut in halves
3 plantains, cut in halves and fried

- Place tongue in large pot of water and bring to boil; simmer until tongue is tender; prick tongue to test. By then the tough cover of the tongue will peel off easily.
- Marinate the tongue for 40 minutes or longer. In a large pot, heat the oil and brown the tongue. Remove the tongue, but leave the oil. Saute the garlic until golden brown. Add the onion and tomatoes and saute until soft. Put the tongue back in the pot. Pour in the marinade and prick the tongue to allow the liquid to penetrate.
- Remove the tongue and slice. Return the slices to the pot, add the potatoes and carrots and simmer until vegetables are tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add the stuffed olives and mushrooms and simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve hot. Garnish with fried plantains. (Serves 10)
From Cecilia Brainard's favorite recipes, recipe courtesy of Rose Cuisia Franco.

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Today I am cooking tongue. I should say "Lengua" to make it sound more dignified, but it's tongue nonetheless - a huge cow's tongue around a foot long, still with the grizzly covering that needs to be peeled off. It's in boiling salted water right now, and later on I'll peel that outer skin off. That's the ugly looking part, with little pimply bumps, the sight of which can make a person reject eating tongue for life. But since I grew up eating Lengua Estofada and Lengua Escarlata and Lengua Con Setas, and no longer have the cook Menggay around, I have to do the dirty work. The sight of the ugly uncooked tongue doesn't bother me because when I look at it, I can imagine the cooked tongue on a platter, with velvety red-brown sauce covering it, some mushrooms, plantains, and onions, maybe carrots and sweet potatoes surrounding it. Very elegant. Mouthwatering.

I've learned to appreciate the ritualistic feeling of preparing the comfort foods of my youth. It feels healing, like I'm connecting to some part of myself that sometimes I forget is still there! The part that eats tongue!

I had a difficult time finding today's tongue. My Filipino market, Seafood City on Vermont, didn't have tongue; neither did Von's; and fortunately Albertson's in Santa Monica had tongue. The wonder of it is that it was inexpensive; it was only ten dollars for one cow's tongue. Think of it, one big cow gave up it's life so I can cook that tongue. I wouldn't give up my tongue for just ten dollars! But maybe it's cheap because many Americans do not eat tongue. I think only Deli's serve tongue, in sandwiches, and we have some friends who have distant memories of tongue being served in their homes, but they no longer serve them in their homes.

My American family does not eat tongue. That is an understatement. My American family abhors tongue. They are terrified of tongue. When they see the huge cow's tongue coiled in my huge cooking pot and they see strange foamy scum floating on top, they turn away in total disgust. "It's Ok," I say, "I'm throwing away that water. It's just to remove the outer skin."

I'll admit that when the children were young I used to tease them by holding the uncooked tongue in front of my mouth, so maybe that little joke has permanently damaged their relationship with beef tongue forever. I'd tried to convince them that it tastes just like beef, but just by looking at the slices of tongue, they could tell that the texture was different. I assured them it's tender, and tasty, and melts in their mouth. They were unconvinced. Once I cooked tongue along with some beef stewing meat; that is the two kinds of meat cooked in the same liquid/marinade - and they swore they could detect the taste of tongue on the beef and refused to eat the beef stew. So really, I stopped cooking beef tongue for the family. And there's no point going through all that work just so I can have my Lengua. But this weekend, I'll be seeing some Filipino friends, and like me, they were raised to appreciate such fine food as Lengua - so I'm cooking tongue for them - for us.

I'll serve this with some full-bodied red wine, and rice, because we eat rice with most everything, and rice will sop up all that delicious sauce.

That's the plan.

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Tags: #recipe #food #Pinoy #Philippines #cooking #ceciliabrainard

Read also:
Fried Chicken Caribbean Style

 Chicken soup for my bad cold


Cooking with Cecilia: Pasta with Crab Roe or Aligue

Cooking with Cecilia: Lengua Estofada

Philippine Cooking: Spam, Eggs, and Rice Breakfast

Philippine Cooking: Ube Halaya


Hot Chocolate Drinks: Chocolate-Eh, Chocolate-Mexicano, Chocolate Filipino


Monday, May 11, 2015

Cooking with Cecilia: Chicken Malunggay or Moringa Soup



While I'm on the mend, I haven't gotten rid of my cold. The worst day was Day 3, but at Day 6, I'm not done. I continue to be vigilant and am resting and taking my medicines. I've added Aleve to my arsenal of treatments.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Philippine Cooking: Ube Halaya or Purple Yam Dessert





In the Philippines, we used to eat Purple Yam or Ube, a root with dense purple flesh. Sometimes this was boiled; sometimes this was added in other dishes. It had a distinctive pleasant taste, which I can't really describe beyond saying I could taste the forest in it.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Filipino Cooking: Recipe for Carol's Cornbread Bibingka

 Recipe for Carol's Cornbread Bibingka

Carol Ojeda-Kimbrough shares with us her recipe for Bibingka Galapong, a favorite Filipino "cake."
Carol says she arrived at this recipe by trial and error, by playing with different recipes until she got the taste and texture just the way she likes.