Dishing up vegetarian specialties at Bauhinia Filipino Cuisine

As Iloilo City is positioning itself as the "City of Wellness and Healthy Lifestyle", Bauhinia Filipino Cuisine dishes up vegetarian dishes as a support tho this thrust. A collection of old favorites, best-sellers and new fusion dishes, these 12 dishes make a complete meal as they come as soup, appetizers, main course and dessert. Let's discover the "vegetarian" inside us with these sumptuous creations.

To start out our vegetarian gastronomic tour, how about this Kinilaw Quatro. A 4-1 appetizer plate consisting of Bauhinia's best love kinilaw dishes.

There's Kinilaw nga Seaweed and Kinilaw nga Amargoso (Ampalaya/Bitter Gourd)

Add to that Kinilaw nga Rabanos (radish) and Kinilaw nga Talong (eggplant)

Whetting our appetites more is Ensalada ng Langka kag Puso ng Saging. This salad is a spicy-creamy concoction of jackfruit and banana heart embraced by vinegar and coconut cream spiced up by chilis.

Tickling our tastebuds is La Pinay Salad, a medley of Mesclun salad, grilled eggplant, roasted bell peppers and cashew praline in spicy balsamic dressing

Be sure to make some room for Lumpiang Ubod!

A colorful mix of fresh and organic vegetables makes one of the most popular Ilonggo dish - Laswa. Part of Bauhinia's Ilonggo menu selection, this comes without the seafood making it perfect for vegetarians.

Here's Linatik nga Kalabasa on a bed of young shoots/leaves of squash vine. Another popular Ilonggo dish also known as Nilatik or Linutik, it's basically a mash of squash cooked with moringa/malunggay leaves and if not for the vegetarians, it is flavored with dried and salted fish.

How about some Relleno nga Amargoso? Filipinized as relyeno, it a cooking style that stuffs something into another. Most popular in the Philippines is Relyeno na Bangus, that is a staple at home during the Holy Week. Now, a mix of seasoned mung bean sprouts, chayote and carrots fills in blanched ampalaya tubes which makes this dish a bitter, I mean better presented dish.

Now here's something almost in the boundary of extraordinary - Pinaksiw nga Sab-a nga Saging sa Labog. Now where to start? Paksiw is a cooking method that mainly uses vinegar and spices - and mainly used for fish preparations. Labog is known as roselle, a vine that produces a deep violet "bud" and is mainly used in cooking some Ilonggo specialties especially those involving native chicken. And using saging nga sab-a, completes this curios dish as this banana variery complements pork dishes like pochero, estofado and more. But for this dish, its actually the main ingredient - a play of sweet and sour!

A more familiar dish is Kare-Kare and here's the "Vegan" version - eggplant, string beans, banana heart, and pechay in a savoury peanut sauce.

Vegetable Fritters for those who craved for something crispy - eggplant, carrot, okra, sayote and more. - Comes with three delightful sauces - seasoned tomato, a turmeric-based one and I forgot the other.

To end the main course with a bang- here's a Vegetable Stew that reminds me of Caldereta. In fact, it looks and tastes like caldereta just without the meat.

Our food tasting ended on a sweet note with the Fried Kamote Chips in Sugar with Latik. A fitting finale and on of the more popular items served that day.

To make it a completely healthy lunch, we opted for Bauhinia's Lemongrass based drinks. Here's a literally cool version of the drink I call Lemondgrade - for lemon grass ade.

But with my sorethroat still haunting me, I opted for the hot version of lemongrass drink which came with honey. And I really loved it!

Now, Ilonggos, whether vegetarians or not, have the options to go healthy as Bauhinia Filipino Cuisine dishes up these delicious dishes that will suit a herbivore's lifestyle!

(Bauhinia Filipino Cuisine is located at The Avenue Complex, Glicerio Pison Avenue, Smallville Mandurriao, Iloilo City. For reservations, call Bauhinia at (033) 329-6951)

An Ilonggo favorite - Valenciana

Found in almost all occasions like fiesta, birthdays, reunions and others, Ilonggos really love valenciana because most if not all have grown accustomed of having it in special gatherings at home. A complete " go, grow and glow " dish because it has the carbohydrates, protein and vitamins and minerals in just one spoonful, Valenciana is really an " occasional dish ". Here's the recipe for Valenciana

Ultimate Ilonggo Favorite: KBL Kadyos, Baboy, Langka

K.B.L. or Kadyos, Baboy, Langka is the ultimate favorite dish of most Ilonggos. It is also one of the most missed native dishes as kadyos and the souring ingredient, batwan , are hard to find when outside of the Ilonggo region. Basically, it is boiled/stewed pork dish owing its "deliciousness" to the combination of the soft and tender pork, the tamed sourness of batwan and the malinamnam na sabaw . One of the "secrets" of the malinamnamn na sabaw , is the fact that the pork, whether just the plain meat or pata (hocks) are first grilled or broiled. This gives the broth a rather smoky taste that makes it more appetizing.. Learn how to make the Ilonggo dish KBL (Kadyos, Baboy, at Langka) with the recipe below. Ingredients 1 kilo Pata (pork hocks) or pork cubes, GRILLED and sliced into bite size pieces 1 unripe Jack fruit, cubed 2 cups pigeon pea (kadyos) 6-8 pieces batwan fruit (or tamarind powder) 1 piece pork broth cube (

Takway

The gabi (taro) is just one of those plants which is edible from "roots to tops". The most popular of which is the tuber part which is used in a variety of dishes and mostly in combination with coconut milk. Its leaves, of course, is the main ingredient of a Bicol specialty, laing . It is dried then chopped and sauteed with other ingredients including, again, coconut milk. Then there is takway . The local term for its tendrils/runner, that part which is torn between being a stem or a root for it neither grows upwards nor downwards - it grows sideways . Scraped off of its outer skin, takway is often a key ingredient in vegetable dishes like laswa and the gabi tuber with coconut milk and local snails know as bago-ngon . It is also popular when cooked adobo style with guinamos , the local bago-ong . It is very popular in the region that even big supermarkets sell takway in style - cleaned and plastic wrapped in styro with some additions to make it easier to prepare.

Easy Century Tuna Recipes

If you're looking for simple, easy and delicious Century Tuna recipes online, congratulations, you've found it right here! How about spicy tuna sisig or tuna sinigang ? Maybe stir fried tuna with pickles or just yang chow fried rice . I love Century Tuna from its flakes in oil variety, the spicier the better, but when I discovered the versatility of its solid variant, it became an obsession. At first I was just into the usual tested recipes; pasta and sandwich filling, but then it got simpler – I just eat it straight from the can! Usually with a piece of bread or an apple. I just add a few drops of vinegar to spice it up a bit. Then came the experiments. Yup I got tired of that habit that one day, I decided to test my skills in the kitchen. Serendipity, you might call it yet most of them turned into good recipes that I have shared now and then. Satisfying my Palabok cravings had me experiment on this recipe on the spot. With Century Tuna in lieu of the usu

A native delicacy called Inday-inday

Now you may ask, what is Inday-Inday ? It's another repetitive-feminine named native delicacy that is made from rice like its more popular sister - baye-baye . While the latter is has its own original flavor and make, inday-inday is actually a combination of two well loved native delicacies - muasi ( palitaw ) and bukayo . But the muasi portion is not the the usual palitaw recipe for the it's more firm and gummy (I don't know the English term for kid-ol ). Actually its more like a hardened kutsinta and this makes it more to my liking since I'm not really fond of muasi in the first place. And its not quite easy to find inday-inday in the market today, though I've seen and tried it in Sabor Ilonggo stalls but their's is more like suman latik for the based is ibos -like. Ibos is malagkit rice boiled in gata which is called suman in Tagalog. Despite the uncertainty for its nomenclature (I've read that inday-inday is just plain pal

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