AN AFTERNOON WITH THE FILIPINA HOMEBAKERS ONLINE

Last Saturday,  Angelo Comsti and I went to the Maya Kitchen to meet the Filipina Homebakers Online. It was their anniversary and they invited us to do a demo.  We were also fortunate to have National Bookstore set up a booth there to sell our books... Home Cafe and Homemade for the Holidays.

Here are the girls of National Bookstore posing beside our books at the Maya Kitchen.

Here are some of the items that were baked for the demo and were later served for tasting. These are muffins made using the pancake mix of Maya with some coffee flavor by Rory Subida.

Baklava made by Angelo...it was then cut up into smaller pieces so everyone could try it.

Here's what I made...Fallen Cake, a recipe from Home Cafe book. It's a souffle type cake, almost flourless so it's rich and moist.

Here's a carrot cake made from using the carrot cake mix by Maya, dusted with powdered sugar.

Here's the carrot cake with streusel...same recipe was used, this time, topped with streusel for an added crunch.

I'm assuming these are fried dough. Also served during the event.

Here we are...photo with the group.

It was such a fun afternoon. It was nice to meet the members of the Filipina Homebakers Online! Thanks for inviting us. It was a pleasure meeting all of you! :-)

Testing 123

I finally downloaded the blogger app on my iPhone. This will probably encourage me to post more stuff in my
blog.

It's been quite a while since I've written. I haven't posted much recipes either though I've been trying out several restaurants in Manila. I've been whipping up stuff too at home and doing experiments for the store.

Anyway, I'm back and will be writing more soon... :-)

Here's what I had for dinner tonight... Pasta Vongole, Yummy Pork BBQ from Three Sisters, Lengua, and Iberian Chicken.

If you have any recipe requests, do send me an email. Let me see if I have it in my recipe bank.

STREET FOOD IN BEIJING

In Beijing, in the Wangfujing area, there's a strip where they sell street food. Every day, as the sun begins to set, the people set up the food in the stalls and they start preparing the food that they will sell for the evening.  Here are the photos of what they sell there.  Some are really interesting. I can only take photos and not try.  I couldn't afford to have a bummed stomach as my days were always full for sight seeing, I'm sure you know how the public toilets are there and I wouldn't want to be looking for one every hour or so. Ok back to the food story... check out some of the labels! :-)

 Silkworm

 Crayfish

 Octopus

 Skewered fresh fruits

 Skewered scorpions

 Skewered grasshoppers

 I would've loved to try this! Steamed crabs!!!

 Noodles with assorted meat and vegetables cooked on the flat top

 Assorted dumplings

 Noodle soups

 Caramelized skewered fruits

 Which one would you try here???  I think I'll go for the snake :-)

 Starfish and I think stinky tofu

baby shark :-( how sad... then below are photos of the other stalls that they have on the strip.

DINNER IN BEIJING

Happy Easter to everyone! I hope everyone had a fun break. 

Ok this is not exactly the best meal I had there but it's nice to share this. It's quite surprising to have something like this in a seafood restaurant.  If they can serve food like this and knowing that it's not their specialty, I think the specials would taste excellent! I didn't even get the name of the restaurant but this is the seafood restaurant by Novotel Xin Quiao in Beijing on the second floor.

We didn't really order much because we just had cocktails an hour before we headed to the restaurant.

 Here's the sliced soft tofu with sauteed vegetables.  It was pretty good! 

 Here's the eggplant hotpot with straw mushrooms.  The eggplant was cooked well and the sauce was flavorful.  

 We got this for the kids...Garlic chicken.  It's basically seared chicken pieces seasoned with cracked Schezuan peppercorn and garlic.  It was good too.

 This was the favorite that evening... stewed pork with wood ear mushrooms. The pork was melt-in-your mouth tender! I'm sure they cooked this for several hours to get it that tender.

Here are the noodles that we had, stir fried with beef.  It was well cooked too.


We planned on going back for another meal to try the other dishes on the menu.  The prices were very reasonable too.  We decided though to try the japanese restaurant right beside it though. Anyway, will definitely keep this one on my list.