Tag Archives: Filipino Food

Filipino torta, quiche style

I love me some torta, a Filipino dish akin to a stuffed omelet. But there’s a technique to it that I just cannot master — the pan flip. It scares the hell out of me, so I’ve avoided cooking it for years because I cannot do the pan flip. Above, on the left, you see an intact, traditional torta. Here’s what one of my fails looks like:

IMG_2072See the break toward the right? It is an offense to my Filipino heritage. So when I finally figured out, a few years ago, what a quiche was, I thought to myself — that doesn’t sound so far from a torta; why can’t it be made like that?

I have finally developed a recipe for a quiche-style torta. It’s a combination of the recipe my sister developed from the memory of my mom’s torta, and a crustless mini quiche recipe from Will Cook For Friends.

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My personal recipe for munggo (mung bean soup)*

My munggo, or mung bean soup, contains both shrimp and pork, FYI. There was some interest in my recipe on Facebook, so I decided to put my recipe here.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound of mung beans
  • 1 Tbsp of vegetable oil
  • 1 lb pork, sliced into thin strips
  • 1/2 lb shrimp
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 3 cups chicken stock (if you use more, its fine — I hate wasting half a can of chicken broth)
  • Patis (fermented fish sauce) to taste
  • 1 bunch of spinach

Before you begin cooking, soak the mung beans in water for at least a couple of hours before boiling for faster cooking.

Boil mung beans in water until soft and easily mashed. Set the mung beans aside.

In a pan, heat the oil, add the pork and cook until the meat turns slightly brown. Then add the garlic, onions and tomatoes. Saute until the tomatoes are wilted. Add the shrimp until they’re just pink. Pour in the chicken broth, then add the boiled mung beans. Bring it all to a boil and let it simmer until thick. Season with patis to taste, then fold in the spinach. Cover and remove from heat. Serve hot over white rice.

*I’ve been keeping track of what I eat lately, so I was interested in finding out what the nutrition info on my recipe was. Check it out. (I estimate that this recipe yields 10 servings.) What I’m hearing from my fellow Filipino moms is that this is great dish to eat for milk production.

munggo nutrition info

Not street-style eating

Gourmet food trucks are now becoming an event in the suburbs. It’s a far cry from the food trucks I used to grab a quick burger or bag a chips from as a teenager. I once saw a Kogi truck, but I was unfortunately on my way to a dinner appointment. So when it was announced that the Manila Machine was being added to the Calabasas Commons’ Street Eatz event, I started making plans to take Michael after work.

Street Eatz

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No such thing as Filipino fine dining

All my Filipino friends on Facebook have been sharing this recent article in the L.A. Times about, despite the abundance of classically-trained chefs of Filipino descent, how none of them seem willing to start a fine dining restaurant featuring Filipino food. The article appeared to be the centerpiece of the Food section for that day, which also included a review of Magic Wok in Cerritos and recipes for nilaga, adobo and bichu-bichu (which I don’t think I’ve ever had, but whatever). The article asks the question: why can’t Filipino food go mainstream and be featured in a fine dining restaurant? Why isn’t it as popular as Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai food?

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Champorado flashback

It’s been a long time since I did a Filipino food post. You may think this concoction looks strange, but when I saw a post on Burnt Lumpia about champorado is something I remember so fondly from my childhood. And being seven months pregnant, I’m totally suggestible, so I dragged Trinity to a Filipino market for the ingredients next chance I got.

Champorado

The entire cooking set includes the recipe and the modifications I made. Bottom line: using the tablea and the coconut milk was not entirely to my liking. I believe that my mom used to use unsweetened cocoa, which sounds easier than using tablea, so I will probably go that route next time.