Tag Archives: Cooking

Adventures in Filipino cooking: Picadillo

Ground Beef & Vegetable Stew (Picadillo)

As I mentioned recently, I got a new cookbook and Trinity has been itching to try it out. We happened to have ground beef on hand, so we decided to try Picadillo, a ground beef and vegetable stew. It was mighty tasty and very fast to make. Check out the Flickr set for the directions. Warning: it does require fish sauce, aka patis. Hahah! PinoyCook, by the way, has a chicken version.

Kitchen essentials

Photo from Kitchens.com

If you watch HGTV as much as I do (compulsively, I can’t help it!), you might believe kitchen essentials include a backsplash, a skylight, heated bamboo floors, stainless steel appliances, cherry wood cabinets, granite countertops…I’m sorry, what? Ooops, I was just drooling there, my bad.

Yes, yes, I know. Short of either winning the lottery or writing a best-selling novel (or even maybe selling a blog!), this ain’t going to happen. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Anyway, this all comes up because of a recent article in the LAT about kitchen essentials. These may not be my essentials, but it was still an interesting list. It includes:
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Where are the Filipino cookbooks?

Trinity and I were at Barnes & Noble the other night. He went off to find his favorite books and I wandered over to the cookbooks. For some reason, there are at least two or three titles about Chinese, Korean, Thai and Indian cooking — but just one about Filipino cooking. What’s up with that?

The Filipino-American Cookbook

The Filipino-American Cookbook

The book I found was “The Filipino-American Kitchen” by Jennifer M. Aranas. The recipes looked interesting, and I’m sure it appeals to the Food Network crowd…but that’s not what I’m looking for.
And to be honest, I’d rather be learning from the Aida M. Barrientos school of cooking, but I missed that boat. My mom seriously made the best kare kare, pinakbet, pancit, mungo, sinigang, adobo, caldareta….Trinity especially wants me to learn how to make caldareta. I miss kare kare. I can do sinigang pretty well, am pretty good with adobo and can do lumpia….but man. That’s it? I suck.
Anyone have any suggestions on Filipino cookbooks? I don’t know if this is possible, but I would prefer one done by a Pampangan author — my mom used to say Pampangan women were the best cooks. Heehee.