Tracking Down Exotic Ingredients for My 'American Adobo' Dinner
Specialty ingredients for my 'American Adobo' Filipino dinner include Tamarind paste or powder, Jicama Root, Oyster Sauce, Chili Garlic Sauce, Patis, Cinnamon, Pastry Crust, Palm or Rice Vinegar, Coconut Milk, Sesame Seeds, Sesame Oil, Soy Sauce, Bay Leaf, Chorizo, and Hearts of Palm.

I already have cinnamon, a jar of chili garlic sauce, a bottle of oyster sauce, and a bottle of patis. Coconut milk is easy to find, as is sesame oil. I'd like to try to find some palm vinegar, but if it's not available locally, then rice wine vinegar, which I already have, is a recommended substitute. Fortunately, I feel confident that my favorite local Mexican grocery will serve me well for the tamarind, jicama, and chorizo, not to mention all the fresh fish and chicken. Rene recently bought a couple of small jicama roots at a Mexican market here in town and raved over how fresh and crunchy they were.

For those of you who wish to purchase any of the Asian specialty items I mentioned here, AsianFoodGrocer.com is an excellent online source.

08:55 AM PST Permalink |

A List of Ingredients for My 'American Adobo' Filipino Dinner
Specialty Ingredients:

Tamarind paste or powder, Jicama Root, Oyster Sauce, Chili Garlic Sauce, Patis, Cinnamon, Pastry Crust, Palm or Rice Vinegar, Coconut Milk, Sesame Seeds, Sesame Oil, Soy Sauce, Bay Leaf, Chorizo, Hearts of Palm,

Fresh Ingredients:

Chicken Breasts, Chicken Legs & Thighs, Ground Beef, Shrimp, Fresh White Fish, Whole Fish, Limes, Onions, Garlic, Carrots, Scallions, Potatoes, Jalapenos, Butter Lettuce, Vinegar, Ketchup, Ginger, Red & Green Peppers, Green Beans, Napa Cabbage, Bean Sprouts, Bok Choy, Rice.

Basics:

Eggs, Cornstarch, Flour, Cooking oil, Sugar, Brown Sugar, Salt & Pepper

12:06 AM PST Permalink |

Deciding on the Dishes for My 'American Adobo' Dinner & a Movie

Appetizer: Lumpia (Meat & Vegetable Wraps) & Empanada (Savory Tarts)
Soup: Sinigang (Tamarind Seafood Vegetable Soup)
Salad: Kinilaw (Spicy Fish Salad in Coconut Cream)
Main Course: Chicken Adobo (Vinegared Stew), Escabeche (Sweet & Sour), Stir-fry Vegetables and Garlic Rice
Dessert: Fresh Tropical Fruits with Coconut Sorbet

12:00 AM PST Permalink |

A Night to Remember
Last night, Rene and I attended a high-brow fundraiser for Queen of the Valley, our local hospital. We were there as guests of Camie Bianchi, one of my graphic design clients who is on the board of directors. As part of the festivities, she had commissioned me to design a set of place cards with mini bio's of 40 queens throughout history. The ten place settings at each of the 40 tables featured a different queen, to serve as an ice-breaker for strangers seated at the same table. It was definitely one of the most fun and fascinating research projects I've ever done.

The event was held at Silverado Country Club, beginning with a champagne reception and silent auction, mostly of coveted Napa Valley wines, followed by a live auction throughout the dinner, featuring jewelry, artwork, travel packages, and gourmet dinners. The bidding was quite spirited, with some items fetching upwards of $10,000. Of course, on my humble salary, I couldn't splurge on such grand luxuries, but it was certainly fun to be in the midst of it.

For a dinner party to accommodate 400 guests, the meal and service were fantastic. We were served Warm Stilton Tartlettes on Baby Greens with Violet Petals and Walnut Vinaigrette; Roasted Filet Mignon with Pancetta Lardons, Oven Baked Yukon Gold Potatoes and Bundled Grilled Vegetables, or Halibut Beurre Noir with Black Butter, Capers and Lemon, Garlic Mash and Bundled Vegetables; and for the vegetarians, Wild Mushroom Wellington. Dessert was a White Chocolate Trifle. Our host had ordered the beef for everyone at the table, and much to my delight, it was tender and grilled to medium rare perfection. The wines served with the meal were a buttery, well-rounded Silverado Vineyards Chardonnay and a velvety, aromatic Paoletti Estates Cabernet Sauvignon. An excellent pairing.

I had bought a new outfit for the occasion: a sexy black velvet halter gown and a new pair of dancing shoes. Rene wore a bright red cashmere blazer over a crimson shirt, black sweatervest and black wool gabardine trousers; and except for the auctioneer, he was the only guy in the place wearing red. After the bidding was over, there was a mass exodus of all the guests who obviously had to be up and at it early in the morning, so Rene and I had the dance floor practically to ourselves. It was great to be out and about in such fine style, and the whole evening was a delightful culmination to several weeks of hard work.

And now...back to designing the menu for my 'American Adobo' Filipino dinner.

03:38 AM PST Permalink |

Designing the 'American Adobo' Menu
For my 'American Adobo' Filipino Dinner, I will be serving the meal in courses, with a couple of appetizers first, followed by a soup and a salad, with two different entrees, plus rice and vegetables. I want to keep the dessert easy and simple, just fresh fruit and sorbet, because with all the recipes I plan to experiment with, we probably won't make it to dessert anyway.
09:20 AM PST Permalink |

Getting Acquainted with Filipino Cuisine
In my research of Filipino cuisine, I have discovered that it is influenced by many cultures, most notably Spanish, Indonesian, Malaysian, Chinese, and Muslim. So traditional dishes include such ethnically diverse ingredients as Southeast Asian patis (fish sauce), Spanish chorizo and linguica sausage, spicy chili peppers, and water buffalo cheese. Seafood is abundant, as are tropical fruits such as coconut, mango and banana. Cooking techniques are fresh and simple, with the most common being stir frying, stewing, and grilling. The most common Filipino dishes include Adobo, a savory vinegar sauce for chicken or pork commonly regarded as the national dish of the Philippines; Empanadas, pastries filled with meat and potatoes; Escabeche, whole fish in sweet and sour sauce, Lumpia, delicate pancakes filled with meats, seafoods and vegetables; Kinilaw, marinated raw fish; and Pancit, a popular noodle dish. Here is a link to an excellent overview of the history and flavors of Philippine food.

12:00 AM PST Permalink |

My Cookbooks
Much to my delight, I have discovered that three of my cookbooks contain dozens of recipes for traditional Filipino dishes. Last month, I bought a copy of 'Martin Yan's Asia', which features a whole chapter on the Philippines. My old stand-by, Corinne Trang's 'Essentials of Asian Cuisine' has a nice selection of Filipino basics, and even 'The Joy of Cooking' has quite a few, although they are not specifically listed as Filipino, so you have to look them up by the name of each individual dish rather than finding a heading for Filipino cuisine in the index.

Martin Yan's Asia contains recipes for such classic dishes as Adobo, Empanadas, Escabeche, Lumpia, Kinilaw, and Pancit. 'Essential's of Asian Cuisine' also features different versions of many of the same recipes. And just for variety, I can look most of them up in Joy of Cooking and find yet another interpretation of the same dishes.

So, with all those wonderful, classic Philippine recipes at my fingertips, looks like I'm good to go with my 'American Adobo' Philippine Dinner.
01:36 PM PST Permalink |

Looking for Filipino Recipes
In anticipation of my 'American Adobo' Filipino Dinner & a Movie, I have already begun perusing my cookbooks in search of recipes and have found that I have quite an abundance of recipes right here in on my own bookshelf. Last month, I added a lovely Asian cookbook by Martin Yan to my collection, which features quite a few tempting recipes from the Philippines. So unless I get curious about a particular dish and feel the need for further research, it seems I need look no further than my own kitchen for all the Filipino recipes I could possibly want.
12:19 AM PST Permalink |

My Filipino Cooking Experience
When it comes to Filipino food, I must admit that I am a neophyte. In fact, my experience with Filipino cuisine, culture and people is limited to a time years ago as a bartender at the Silverado Country Club in Napa, where many of the staff were of Filipino heritage. I found them to be friendly, gorgeous and very hard-working. Alas, the job was temporary, so I wasn't there long enough to get to know any of my Filipino co-workers beyond a first name basis, much less gain any insight into their food and culture. But it certainly looks like I'm finally going to get a crash course on Filipino culture and cuisine over the next few weeks.
12:05 AM PST Permalink |

December's Dinner & a Movie
Welcome to Dinner & a Movie for the month of December. To round out the year, I have chosen 'American Adobo', a Filipino-American film, with a menu of classic dishes from the Philippines to accompany it. Both are going to be quite a gamble, as I've never seen the movie, I've never been to the Philippines, and have never cooked, nor even tasted Filipino food. So this time, I am an absolute beginner. But given the tasty success of all the exotic meals I have prepared in the past seven months, I am confident that I will be able to put an authentic Filipino meal on the table. And American Adobo comes highly recommended.
10:10 AM PST Permalink |

A Day at the Races
After what seems like a never-ending cycle of shopping, chopping and mopping, I finally gave myself a day off from the kitchen. It was a gorgeous autumn day, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The kitchen was clean, the fridge was packed with a bounty of tasty leftovers, my son Will and Rene's nephew Jovan, who were with us for the weekend, had finished all their homework, and Rene had a rare day off too, so...we decided to go to the horse races. After more than 20 years of driving past Golden Gate Fields on Highway 80 near Berkeley, I recently learned that its racing season begins in November, not in April as I'd always assumed. No wonder it was always closed when I tried to plan a summer afternoon at the races.

Of all the sports on God's green earth, horseracing is my very favorite, although I don't know what about it excites me so. Perhaps I was a racehorse or a jockey in another lifetime. Or maybe it's my fond memories of watching the televised Triple Crown races every year with my Dad when I was a child, a tradition that I have carried on with my son. Or maybe it's the visceral thrill of all that equine muscle and sinew thundering pell-mell toward the finish line. Whatever it is, there's no other feeling quite like it.

And I've never been much of a gambler. I can walk through a Las Vegas casino, past banks of jingling slot machines, whirring roulette wheels, high-stakes black jack tables, and smokin' hot craps games completely unfazed. But when it comes to the horse races, they're not nearly as much fun without a small wager riding on the horse with the most spirited gait or the most intriguing name. And I usually have a good eye for picking a winner. But yesterday, although I scored on a quinella in the second race, and picked a winner in the ninth, my hunches were way off the mark. I even let Will talk me into betting on all the possible combinations for a quinella in a 5-horse race in the eighth, but the pair that came in first and second were the two favorites and paid only $9.20 on my $20 wager. So... at the end of the day, I'd left 40 of my hard earned dollars at the track: A small price to pay for the thrill of watching eight adrenaline-pumping races, a really tasty hot dog and a couple of nice cold beers, and the pleasure of spending a sunny Sunday afternoon with my favorite fellas.

And now, time to get started on next month's Dinner & a Movie. This time, I'm headed for the Philippines (vicariously, of course).
12:00 AM PST Permalink |

Children of Heaven Film Review

Children of Heaven is one of my favorite films. And upon seeing it for the third time, its charm and relevance have not diminished. Here is a link to my Children of Heaven Film Review.

09:46 AM PST Permalink |

'Children of Heaven' Iranian Dinner Recipes and Photos
My 'Children of Heaven' Dinner & a Movie was a delicious and exotic adventure in Iranian food and film. For dinner, I served Kufteh Sabzi (Meatballs Simmered in Tomato Sauce), Pita Bread, Maast-o-Khiar (Cucumber, Tomato & Yogurt Salad), Grilled Lamb Kebabs, Albaloo Polow (Basmati Rice with Chicken, Onions and Cherries), Borani Esfanaaj (Spinach with Onions and Yogurt), and Baagh-lava (Honey-Almond Pastry) for dessert. Here is a link to the Recipes and Photos.
12:01 AM PST Permalink |

A Tally of the Cost of Dinner (in U.S.$)
The cost of the ingredients for my 'Children of Heaven' Iranian dinner are listed below. Keep in mind that the prices are based on buying everything new rather than using ingredients that I already had in my pantry. Of course there were lots of things left over for future meals, so the actual cost of the dinner based on the quantities of the ingredients used to make the dishes will be much lower than the grand total of stocking a pantry from scratch for preparing Iranian cuisine.

Specialty Ingredients:

Basmati Rice - 2.49
Cinnamon - .99
Dill - 3.35

Fresh Ingredients:

Lamb - 5.99
Ground Beef - 2.49
Chicken Breasts - 4.29
Spinach - 1.29
Yogurt - 2.49
Garlic - .44
Parsley - .69
Scallions - .59
Cucumber - .79
Tomato - .99
Lemons - .50
Tomato Sauce - .59
Onions - .83
Green Pepper - 1.29
Lentils - 1.29
Frozen Cherries - 2.50

Basics:

Cooking Oil - 2.49
Eggs - 1.89
Butter - 2.50

Wine - 3.34

Total in $US - 44.10

01:05 PM PST Permalink |

Thanksgiving Redux
In the two days before Thanksgiving, we feasted on the leftovers from my 'Children of Heaven' Iranian dinner. Everything reheated splendidly and gave me a much welcome respite from the kitchen. As anticipated, the Borani Esfanaaj (Spinach with Onions and Yogurt) was much tastier warm than cold. The Kufteh Sabzi (Meatballs Simmered in Tomato Sauce) was still the best dish on the plate, and the Baklava was a sweet reward at day's end.

I began my Thanksgiving preparations the Wednesday evening before, doing much of the washing, trimming and chopping of ingredients for all the various dishes. Rene has an extra fridge in the garage that provided much needed storage space for the two twelve-pound turkeys and all the pots and pans full of stock and stuffing.

We enjoyed a nice long night's sleep before waking on Thursday noon to begin cooking. I spent most of the early afternoon assembling the appetizers: Baked Salmon with Cream Cheese, Dill and Capers on French Croutons, Stuffed Mushroom Caps with Smoked Gouda, and Crudites with Spinach Dip. The Stuffed Mushrooms were the best of the bunch, filled with savory breaded stuffing and a tiny wedge of smoky Gouda tucked into the center of each. And the cream cheese with dill was a perfect accompaniment to the flakes of baked salmon garnised with piquant capers.

The Turkey took exactly five hours to roast, and turned out perfectly golden after only a couple of bastings with the drippings from the bottom of the roasting pan. I raised a velvety brown gravy from the same drippings, and served up Side Dishes of breaded stuffing seasoned with onions, green peppers, celery, marjoram and parsley, along with perfectly poached haricots vert, steamed yams au natural, mashed potatoes, and cranberry-orange-walnut relish. We enjoyed a bottle of 1998 Hess Collection Cabernet Sauvignon with Dinner, and although there was still plenty of bakalava left from Monday night's dinner, by the time we'd sated ourselves, neither of us had any room left for dessert. Despite my best efforts otherwise, I succumbed to sleep on the sofa around midnight, while Rene, bless his heart, put away all the leftovers.

Today I'm roasting the second turkey in anticipation of my son Will and Rene's nephew Jovan arriving tomorrow afternoon for a 3-day stay here with us. With two ravenous teenaged boys, and Rene's lusty appetite, I am confident that all those leftovers won't go to waste.
12:15 AM PST Permalink |