A few weeks ago, I attempted the Mount Everest of Filipino cuisine and tried my hand at making caldereta from scratch. It was not easy, let me tell you — I believe it took me an hour of chopping, slicing and preparing, and another two hours of actually cooking the meat so that it would be separate-with-a-fork tender. Plus I had a few obstacles — why do I have to use chorizo? Did my mom use cheddar cheese? I really have to use liver? Really? — but in the end, it was pretty tasty, and Trinity believes it was right on. For the future, I think I will forgo the chorizo, because the taste of the chorizo clashed with the caldereta, in my opinion. I’m also wondering if the minced garlic (we use it out of a jar, its so much easier) should be ground more finely. I’m also not a big fan of olives, but Trinity said he thought the olives really made it seem like caldereta. Oh well.

Check out the Flickr set here. What I really would like to attempt next is kare kare, a peanut soup, but I’m sort of afraid to because of the recent salmonella scare. Although, the recipe in my book calls for roasting peanuts, rather than using peanut butter, which is what my mom used.