Malditah Musings

filipino recipes for christmas

How to Make a Filipino Food From Leftovers?

MaKiNG a FiLiPinO FooDs FroM LeFtOvers

Filipinos are proud of being resourcefulness –making a great masterpieces from whatever’s lying around. That’s why most homes have at least one thing that’s recycled, whether it’s an old bottle-turned-flower vase or an old sheet reused as a doormat. But there’s no doubt we’re the best when it comes to recycling food. Last night’s dinner often becomes a gourmet breakfast for tomorrow, and noche buena leftovers are resurrected in different forms the whole week after Christmas.

Others may think of it as a sign of our poverty, but why not look on the bright side? Our knack for recycling allows us to explore our creativity and come up with new ways to improve Filipino cuisine. If you’re out of ideas for your next meal, dig into the leftovers in your fridge and see what you can do. You’re not likely to come up with haute cuisine, but anything’s better than throwing out moldy food from your pantry.

The key to leftover cooking is variety: find a way to make a new dish totally different from the old one using the same basic ingredients. Still stumped? Here are a few tips and Filipino cooking recipes to help you get started.

Planning Meals in Advance:

In some countries, families are so hard up that using leftovers isn’t an option; it’s a necessity. We may be a little luckier, but we can learn a thing or two from them. Plan your week’s meals so that one day’s dish can be reused the next day. Think of “recyclable” Filipino food recipes-dishes that make enough leftovers to make a new dish from. Examples are roast beef, fried chicken, stews, and barbecues. Chances are there will be some meat left over from the meal, which you can use in a different dish later in the week.

When you shop for recyclable foods, remember that one dish is actually meant for two meals. Get more than one meal’s worth of ingredients just to make sure you get leftovers. You’ll be saving money because instead of shopping for two meals, you’re shopping for one slightly bigger meal. You’ll also save cooking time since the leftover ingredients will already have been cooked.

Chopping up Ingredients:

When cooking with leftovers, you want to make it so that no one can tell they’re eating yesterday’s food. One simple trick is to chop up your ingredients. Cut up pork chops into strips for stir-frying, grind roast beef to make burger patties, dice your vegetables for a leftover soup. They’ll easily recognize yesterday’s pork chops in a different sauce, but it’s hard to tell they’re the same piece when they’re all chopped up.

To see this trick in action, try this chicken wrap recipe using leftover fried or roast chicken.

Chicken Wraps:

Ingredients:

leftover chicken meat, shredded
2 large red bell peppers, quartered
tortilla wrappers
sour cream
cheese
shredded lettuce

Procedure::

Roast the peppers on a baking sheet until the skins turn black (this takes about 5-7 minutes). Place peppers in a paper bag and wait a few minutes for the skin to dry. Afterwards, slip off the skin from the peppers and slice into long thin strips. Saute the peppers along with your chicken. Add a little salt and pepper to taste; you can also add in some Italian seasoning if available. Drain and put in a bowl, then mix in the cheese and sour cream. Wrap the mixture in tortilla wrappers. If you want a light wrap, use light wrappers and fry the peppers in olive oil.

Chicken Wraps:

You normally don’t keep your orange or lemon peels unless you’re making marmalade. But they can come in handy when you need some extra flavor in your food. True, lemons and oranges aren’t normally found in Filipino food, but you never know when a recipe will call for them. When you need lemon or orange zest for Filipino desserts recipes, you don’t have to buy an entire fruit-you can just reach into your freezer and use your old peels. If you can’t use them in Filipino recipes, you can always use than as garnish to your favorite dishes.

Stock up on spices:

Spices are the key to creating new flavors out of old ingredients. You want to cover up the taste of the old dish or at least complement it with a different flavor. Always have a fresh supply of peppers, onions, garlic, and other basic spices so you can whip up a new dish without having to run to the store. Besides, if you have to buy a whole batch of ingredients just to use leftovers, you might as well have made a new dish from scratch.

Reuse your bread:

Every family has thrown out their share of moldy bread from the kitchen, but most of the time, the bread could have been recycled. If your bread isn’t more than a day old, there are a million ways to reinvent it into a new dish. In fact, according to some chefs, dry bread makes the best French toasts. In Filipino cuisine, bread pudding is a popular use for leftover bread. Or if you can’t come up with anything new, you can always keep them for the next time you need bread crumbs.

Here’s an easy bread pudding recipe you can use the next time you have leftover bread.

Ingredients:

4-5 c stale bread, cubed
3 eggs
½ c raisins
¾ tsp nutmeg
¾ c sugar
2 c whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Procedure:

Place the cubed bread in a loaf pan. Don’t pat or squeeze. Beat the eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and vanilla until you get a frothy mixture, then add the milk and raisins. Add the mixture to the bread and mix lightly together. Let it stand for about 30 minutes so the milk can soak in. meanwhile, preheat your oven to 300oF. Bake until the custard sets (about 45 minutes). You can serve it hot or chilled, or with ice cream or whipped cream on top.

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Eating Filipino

Filipinos love to eat. A source of comfort, togetherness and pride, it is fair to say that food dominates our lives. Many a foreigner have remarked on our unique ability to be already planning for the next meal in between bites of the spread currently laid out in front of us. Eating is so constant in fact, that Filipinos frequently use “Kumain ka na?” (Have you eaten yet?) as a way of greeting one another. Food is not served in courses at the Filipino dining table. All dishes – meat, rice, vegetables and soup are artfully arranged on the table at the same time so that the diners can pick and eat from all dishes simultaneously.

Known for our hospitality and warmth, entertaining is a much-loved past time for Filipinos, with food at the center of all social activities. And we never run out of occasions to celebrate and showcase our wide variety of dishes. No doubt, we are proud of our cuisine and all its splendor. Nothing hits the spot quite like a plate of tapsilog (cured beef and fried egg) served with garlic rice and atchara (pickled papaya strips) in the morning, a steaming bowl of sinigang (sour tamarind soup) or dinuguan (a spicy stew made with pork blood) and pu-to (steamed rice flour cakes) on a rainy day, a helping of sizzling sisig (chopped pig’s face) while enjoying a cold beer, or a nice warm ensaymada (buttery sweet roll covered with cheese) just about anytime.

Why then, is Filipino food not popular outside the country? Even the restaurant mecca that is New York City, with its unlimited options for culinary adventures is home to a but a smattering of Filipino restaurants, despite having the fourth largest Filipino American population in a U.S. metropolitan region.

According to Bayan Café owner Carol Kohtiao, it is the aesthetic; simply the way the food looks that seems to turn off foreigners from eagerly diving into a bowl of pork adobo (stew). “Filipino food is very saucy and soupy. It doesn’t look particularly appetizing.” Bayan Café, a Midtown joint which serves up down-home Filipino food that is part turo-turo, is popular among the Filipino lunch crowd especially because of its proximity to the U.N. “There are over 700 Filipinos working the U.N., which is precisely why I decided to set up shop here. 90% of our customers are Filipino.”

It is a shame that our food is not as highly regarded in the United States as other Asian cuisines. There is a Vietnamese craze now sweeping the city of Manhattan, with Pho bars and Bahn Mi sandwich places cropping up in every neighborhood. Those who have sampled our fare will attest to the fact that in terms of taste, Filipino food is right up there with any popular Asian cuisine. There is so much variety and uniqueness of flavor that will delight any palate; it is just a matter of changing the public perception. Filipino chefs in New York have been trying to do just that. Chef Romy Dorotan, former owner of the beloved Filipino Soho spot Cendrillon has reincarnated it as Purple Yam in Brooklyn, featuring a rich selection of Filipino and pan-Asian bites. He was one of the first Filipino chefs in New York who succeeded in appealing to a wider set of diners by adding an elegantly modern twist to down home Filipino cooking. Another chef making waves in the Filipino culinary world is King Phojanakong, a half-Thai, half-Filipino chef who opened the funky Kuma Inn in the Lower East Side and Umi Nom in Brooklyn, serving up upscale Filipino tapas with a little Thai flair thrown in. It is this kind of revolutionizing that Filipino cuisine needs.

As Christmas looms closer, the merry festivities evoke memories of favorite dishes from home. What is the best way to get a taste of the Philippine cooking you know and love? Re-create your favorite dishes at home. Browse through recipes and cookbooks at FilipinoVillage.com and share the wonderful secrets of Filipino food with good friends.

About the Author

For more information, visit FilipinoVillage.com
Source: http://www.filipinovillage.com/Press_Releases/FV-Eating Filipino.pdf

Morcon