Birthday Lunch: Simple and delicious

So what's on the table for my mother's ?? birthday a few days ago? A menu of favorites - favorite cake, favorite recipe, favorite brand, favorite flavors, favorite fruits, etc.

Here's Chicken Sotanghon using the locally made Marca Pato sotanghon brand with lots of sahog - chicken strips, carrots and cabbage with even a lot more of black pepper! This got to be my first sotanghon where the sahog were twice as much as the noodles.

Another chicken dish is the Tinolang Bisaya na Manok or native/free range chicken. Aside from using our favorite combo of green papaya and sili leaves, I guess its a favorite past time of mine to feed our native chicken with anything from the kitchen - rice, bread, even spaghetti noodles.

Easy and a favorite recipe during special occasions is the Sweet and Sour Fish or Escabeche. Just fry your favorite fish then top it with an easy sauce made with vinegar, sugar and cornstarch with onion, bell peppers and carrots.

The "Turbo Pork Liempo" is almost a family tradition using our decades old turbo broiler. And among the easiest to make - boil pork liempo in seasoned broth then pat dry (best if done a day ahead) before placing it in the turbo broiler for about 30-45 minutes or until the skin if brown and crisp. Perfect with my fave dip - banana ketchup, calamansi and sili!

The Embutido is another favorite recipe and instead of the usual hotdogs, we use canned Vienna sausages.It gives more depth to the flavour compared to hotdogs and less of the artificial looking red color. And it's all meat, no extenders!

And what's a birthday without a cake? Here's an Ube Royal Cake from Tinapayan Bakeshop. It's made with layers of ube chiffon, whipped cream and ube halaya topped with more whipped cream and ube halaya and white chocolate.

There's also our favorite fruit of the summer - yellow watermelon in "pick me up" slices.

So cheers to this simple birthday lunch of favorite offerings! Burp!

Fruits from the grocery

These packs of cut up fruits were bought from SM Delgado's grocery. Got enticed by their color and luckily, they were as good as they looked, especially the papaya. Each was just less than Php 22, really a bargain!

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 (

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

Batwan

Ilonggos know batwan or batuan by heart as the fruit is almost endemic to the Western Visayas. Its scientific name is Garcinia binucao, derived from the Tagalog name for the fruit, binukaw. It is a large green fruit with large seeds and its a favorite souring ingredient in most Ilonggo dishes especially KBL or kadyos, baboy, langka and the Ilonggo-style paksiw known as "pinamalhan". It is characterized by a tamed sourness compared to tamarind and kamias . The fruit is sold by pieces or kilo in wet markets and even big grocery stores. Batwan is the preferred souring ingredients for the Ilonggo favorite- KBL. The photo shows boiled batwan with skin and without skin (right) A favorite riddle when we were young - "Among the many fruits in the forest, but one (batuan) is the best. What is it?"

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.

FLAVOURS OF ILOILO

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